


Not All That Bad

by goldiealchemy



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Abusive Relationship, Alternate Universe - College/University, Amputee!Marco, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Arty Jean, Break Up, House Party, Marco's POV, Multi, Plot Twists, fake burns described in detail, false declarations of no homo, fluff and cutes, gay boyfriends being cute, house fire, no homo?, pining marco, writer Marco
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-08 00:21:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1919691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldiealchemy/pseuds/goldiealchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(This fic is currently abandoned in my hard drive somewhere... See final chapter for more details)</p><p>Marco Bodt is a "newbie" at Trost University. He got in on a scholarship and is surrounded by rich kids. This IS the best university in the country after all. Marco finds himself rooming with Jean Kirschtein, a small guy but a small guy with a mean looking face. But Marco quickly decides that Jean's not all that bad. However, when Marco is seriously injured in a Halloween party disaster, he finds himself in a difficult position: trying to protect this boy who has so many secrets.</p><p>Will their friendship flourish or flop? Will they find romance or repulsion? Are they really "no homo"ing? Hell yes they are. Do they really mean it? Who knows... maybe "no homo" is more relevant than they first thought.</p><p>*rated M for domestic abuse, violence, life-threatening injuries and who knows maybe some suggestions of the frick frack later on?*</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. New Born

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first chaptered fic that I've ever uploaded anywhere. This is all I have at the moment. I'll probably keep writing it and I'll upload more at some point if people like it :)
> 
> I usually update on Saturdays but chapter 7 is going to be late because I'm not sure I'm happy with it yet. Also I'm on holiday with my famy which doesn't help with the writing thing!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Link it to the world / link it to yourself"
> 
> Marco is a newbie, Jean is a bit of a dick and there are lots of Bodts.

The journey to Trost University was, thankfully, only an hour long. I lived on the other side of Trost to the university, so at least I didn't have to swap trains to get there. Public transport had never really been my thing. It's far too easy to get off at the wrong stop or get on the wrong train and be taken halfway across the country before you realise you should have arrived like, three hours ago.

I'd already said goodbye to my parents before I boarded the train, and now I had one hour to prepare myself to make friends. _Put on that brave face, Marco,_ I recalled my mother's words, accompanied with her own interpretation of "that brave face." _I know you'll be fine. You're a kind, sweet young man and you'll easily make friends so don't worry, you silly thing!_

I think my mom had this alternate reality going on inside her head where I was still five years old and didn't know how to take care of myself. She acted as though the past fourteen years had never happened and you can only imagine how uncomfortable it made me at times. My dad, on the other hand, had this theory that I was far older than I actually was. Maybe it was because I was the only male of his five children, I don't know. But he liked to treat me as though I was nearly thirty like my older sister Jen, and perfectly understood his talk of politics and finances. Oh, and yeah, you heard me right. There are five of us. When I started at Trost University Jenna was twenty seven with a husband and a two year old daughter, Poppy was twenty three and engaged to her boyfriend, Rachel was sixteen and stuck in the internet realm, and Jasmine was six. I have no idea why the age gaps were so big, ask my parents, but I know for a fact that they planned every single one of us. Apparently dad cried most when I was born. He always wanted a son and I don't know if that makes me feel special or just kind of weird. We all took after mom, with her wild, dark hair and millions of freckles and her soft, honey-brown eyes. All of us, excluding Poppy. She was the only one who looked even remotely like dad. The two of them had fiery red hair and a deathly-pale complexion, with misty blue eyes which felt like they were looking into your very soul.

You know how when you want time to pass quickly it goes agonisingly slowly and when you want things to slow down they just get faster? I was terrified of joining Trost, although I wasn't particularly sure why. I was scared I would get lost and then have to ask for directions. I might trip and make a fool of myself in front of all my new classmates. What if my new roommate hated me? I think that was the thing I was most nervous about, but before long, the train had come to a halt and a bored sounding voice called out "Trost University Station." Quickly, I shoved my Nintendo DS and copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban into my rucksack and grabbed my suitcase. I scurried off the train and onto the platform. I couldn't help but let out a low whistle of awe at the sight of the place. It was kind of magnificent. High arches between each station, everything completely spotless. They might as well have put a massive banner stating "rich people only." Oh, but then they should add "and Marco Bodt - the scholarship kid" in small font underneath.

I hurried along with the crowd, following everyone down the stair case and through the ticket thingies and then out into the September sunshine. I say sunshine... It was a chilly, overcast day and what little sun managed to seep through the clouds shed absolutely no warmth onto the people rushing around the University. The University itself put the train station to shame. There were three main dorm buildings which I recognised from the website. Maria, Rose and Sina. Sina was the building at the far end of the campus, with really nice, expensive dorms which were basically small but fancy apartments. Rose was toward the middle of the campus, but on the edge. That's where I was staying. Rose was full of nice dorms for two to four people. Each dorm had its own bathroom which was nice, but it was communal dining. The food was made by chefs though, so students were always guaranteed a selection of nice food. Maria were the cheapest dorms. Close to the train station, they had dorms for two to four people, like Rose, only they had communal bathrooms and dining rooms and they had to make their own food. I wouldn't mind making my own food, but I like to have my own bathroom, even if I have to clean it myself.

I snagged the map of the Trost campus that had been mailed to me from my bag and set about locating the Rose dorm building. It didn't take me too long to find it, a long, tall building made of delicate looking white and green stones with ivy winding its way up from the ground to the top of the fourth floor, but the small amount of parks and buildings that I passed on the way there were simply beautiful. I'd have to go on a proper tour later on.

I dragged my suitcase up the short flight of steps to the reception area of Rose and waddled over to the desk. The lady behind said desk looked up as she heard me approaching. She was probably in her early thirties and had her deep brown hair stuffed back into a ponytail. A pair of full-rimmed glasses sat on her nose in front of her excited looking brown eyes. When she saw me, a huge grin spread over her face.

"Hey there Newbie!" she called and held up a hand in greeting. I smiled back as she said "so what's your name?"

"Marco Bodt," I stated, placing my suitcase on the ground and resting my arms on the counter. "I should be in a double room?"

She waved her hand at me, indicating for me to shut up. "Yeah yeah  I've got you. You're in room 104 with Jean Kirschtein. He's already here but the doors don't open from the outside unless you have a key so," she said everything very quickly and paused to take a breath, "just to save you from looking like an idiot you'll have to use this," she handed me a key with a label which said "104" in thick black writing, "even though he's already in there and unlocked the door to let himself in."

I smiled warily at her. She seemed friendly, maybe overly friendly, but maybe I would be able to befriend her. I glanced at her name tag. "Professor Hanji." Ok let's not try and befriend one of the professors that would probably not do my street cred any good. I gave Professor Hanji one last smile and turned toward the elevator and stairs. There was no way I was going to drag my suitcase all the way up however many flights of stairs, so I pressed the button to call down the elevator. Actually...

I turned back to Professor Hanji and called "excuse me, what floor am I going to?"

She glanced up and pointed at herself, confused as to who I was addressing. I looked around the reception area. There were only two other people there and they were engrossed in conversation. I nodded quickly, looking at Hanji again. She was looking down at her computer monitor.

"Room 104? First floor and then all the way down to the left." She waved as I thanked her and moved into the elevator, pressing the button for floor one.

This was it. Time to meet my roommate for the next year. Jean Kirschtein. Professor Hanji had said it like "gene" but I knew that if it was spelled J.E.A.N then it could be French. In which case she was saying it wrong. I'd have to ask him when I met him.

The elevator binged to let me know I had arrived and as the doors slid open I wondered to myself why a Professor was running the reception desk. _All the way down to the left,_ I heard Hanji's words in my head and followed her instructions.

I passed about ten rooms on my right before I found 110, 108, 106... There. 104. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs as much as I could, and let it out slowly as I pushed the key into the lock and turned it. The door clicked open and I pushed it forward. The room was really nice. The walls were a simple cream colour and the floor was wooden. On the opposite side of the room was a large window with two desks in front of it and on each side of the room was a bed. On the wall with the door were two wardrobes, the furthest one from the door had its doors wide open and clothes were spilling out. Clothes, and my new roommate.

He grunted a few curse words at the piece of wooden furniture and shoved the shoes that were falling out of the bottom of the wardrobe back in before slamming the doors shut. He had already claimed the bed on the far side of the room, so I wandered over to the closer one and heaved my suitcase onto it. Then I turned around to find the guy no longer stuck in the wardrobe, but looking at me with one eyebrow raised.

The first thing that came to mind when I saw him was... small. Like, he wasn't really that _short,_ he probably reached my nose so he was kind of average height, but his frame was just generally small. Almost, dare I say, petite, if a guy can be petite that is. He was quite slim and had long legs. A mop of sandy hair covered the top of his head whereas the rest was cut short and was a darker brown colour. His facial features were sharp and pointed, his nose, his eyebrows, his jaw, the corners of his eyes, the iris' of which were almost golden. His brow was furrowed and he looked generally displeased. I hoped it wasn't me that pulled his features into that expression.

"Are you Bodt?" he said, breaking the awkward silence that had fallen over us.

I cleared my throat, "Marco, yeah. I'm assuming you're Jean then?" I said it the way Professor Hanji had said it. The guy didn't _look_ French...

"It's Jean." Jsh-ahn. Damn. I'd screwed up and I'd known him all of three minutes. Suddenly my feet became very interesting and I glanced down at them, feeling my face flush red from embarrassment.

"Oh, sorry," I stammered, "It's just that's how Professor Hanji downstairs said it and I-"

"Yeah, whatever," Jean turned around to start blu-tacking posters to the wall next to his bed, "Just try not to get it wrong again right? Pisses me off."

I let out a sigh of relief and shuffled back to my bed to begin unpacking my things. I moved my clothes into the wardrobe and started moving my notebooks, study books and writing utensils out to give them a new home in the draws of my desk.

"So what are you studying?" I asked Jean nonchalantly and I looked up when the rustling of posters stopped. He was facing me in front of the wall that was now completely filled - _completely_  filled - with posters of various bands, TV shows, movies and artists. I spotted an A3 Fall Out Boy concert poster and made a mental note to try and bond with Jean over our shared love for the band later.

"I'm gonna major in art and design." Jean raised an eyebrow at me inquisitively. "What about you?"

"Literature," I said as I placed my laptop in the centre of the desk. "I love writing and stuff and even if I don't make it as an author or anything, it's really useful for a load of other jobs." I smiled at him and he snorted before pulling his iPod out of his pocket and plugging it into a small docking station on his desk.

"You mind if I play some music?" He asked. _Hey, he's not just playing it... maybe he's not all that bad!_

"Depends on what it is."

He sighed and began scrolling through the music on the little touch screen device in his hand. "Muse?"

 _He has the same music taste as Rachel_ , I thought to myself.

"Yeah sure, my sister listens to the same music as you, judging by your wall."

"It's not just a wall!" Jean sounded slightly exasperated. "It's THE Wall. The Wall has all the greatest things in the world on it! The best bands and the best movies and artists and friends and shit. Do not take The Wall lightly okay?" He glanced sideways at me and threw me a cocky side-grin. I smiled back, kind of nervous and shy and confused because he seemed hostile before but now..?

"Jesus Christ Bodt, no need to look like you're about to shit your pants! We have to spend the whole year together so try not to freak the fuck out whenever we're both here at the same time okay?" He pressed the play button on his iPod and the room was filled with the opening riff to New Born.

_Definitely not all that bad._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh chapter one complete and you already know the meaning behind the title of the fic wow. Thank you for reading and I hope you liked it? :)


	2. Nothing Else Matters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So close no matter how far / couldn't be much more from the heart / forever trusting who we are / and nothing else matters"
> 
> Gay neighbours, pizza and a new best friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More characters hooray!

For the rest of our first day as roommates, Jean and I sat in the dorm listening to various songs from his iPod and the occasional one from mine, talking about home, our families, what we were looking forward to this year. I learned Jean was an only child, from a pretty wealthy family. Not like, mansions-and-butlers-rich, just, three-story house with a massive garden and an Aston Martin parked in the driveway. He was from Trost, like me, although the pretty fancy stuff closer to the university, so he only lived a ten minute car drive away.

I had wanted to ask why he was boarding at the university, seeing as he lived so close, but I didn't want to pry. Maybe he had family issues, maybe it was something like he was trying to gain some confidence. Although he already seemed pretty confident to me. I had pushed the burning curiosity to the back of my mind to be addressed later. We'd only met that day, I didn't want to come across as rude, you get me?

The evening passed like that and at eleven o'clock I decided to hit the sack. Neither of us had class for a couple of days as it was still only Saturday, but I didn't like to stay up too late. I can't function properly if I'm too tired, and tiredness meant I couldn't write to my fullest!

The next morning I was woken by the voice of Patrick Stump, lead singer of Fall Out Boy. What?

Jean's phone was blaring out The Phoenix, a great song but, really? At seven in the morning? Wait... Was that his ringtone?

I heard Jean grunt and shuffle deeper into his blankets as his phone continued to vibrate and play the blasted song. Time to take some initiative. I grabbed my pillow and hurled it at what I could see of Jean, the top of his head.

"Jesus fuck..." he mumbled as he sat up slowly and grabbed his phone, glaring at the screen before tapping it and pressing it to his ear. "What? It's seven o'clock Mom!"

I held out my hand to Jean and he chucked my pillow back to me so that I could once again cocoon myself in my blankets.

"Yes," Jean was having the typical mom-call experience by the sounds of it. "No... What? Oh yeah I think so. No don't worry Mom. Mom... MOM I'VE GOT THEM SHUT UP ALREADY! Uuuuuggghhhhh... I'm sorry," he sounded so fed up. I chuckled lightly to myself. I know how it feels to have your mom baby you. "No don't worry. Mom I've definitely got them so just... I know. Yeah I know! Drop it, Mom, this is getting ridiculous. Yeah I'll see you... What? Yeah ok, next weekend. Okay. Bye, bye." He finally pulled his phone away from his ear and placed it gingerly back on his desk.

"What was that all about?" I said, my voice muffled by the several layers of duvet and blanket wrapped around my face.

"Oh she was just," he hesitated, "checking I, you know, packed all of my shoes. She's such a pain in the ass sometimes. I know she's just trying to care for me and stuff but..." he trailed off. I wondered why he had hesitated to tell me his mom was calling about shoes. I was pretty sure he was lying but it wasn't my obligation to know every word that passed between him and his parents. I heard him climb back into bed and before long we were both once again taken into the clutches of sleep.

 

*

 

For the second time that morning, I was woken by a loud, unexpected noise. This time it wasn't a phone though. This time someone was knocking on the door. Someone was knocking on the door? Yes. Someone was knocking on the door. I grabbed my phone and checked the time. Eleven fifty eight. Aw crap, half the day was already gone! I couldn't believe I forgot to set an alarm for my first day. At least it was a Sunday and I hadn't missed any classes.

The banging on the door got louder and was accompanied by a deep voice calling into the room.

"OI! KIRSCHTEIN! WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE SO THERE'S NO POINT PLAYING DEAD. WE'RE NOT AFRAID TO BREAK DOWN THE DOOR BUT I DOUBT YOUR ROOMMATE WOULD LIKE THAT."

"Or the university..." I heard another voice mutter from the hallway.

I craned my neck to look over at Jean. He was sitting on his bed with his slim legs hanging over the edge. His pyjama trousers riding up to his knees and his sandy hair mussed from tossing in his sleep. His eyes were closed and he wore a look of pure exasperation on his face.

"Alright, alright I'm coming now." He called to the people outside as he clambered to his feet and ambled over to the door. He grabbed the handle and pulled it open, running a hand over his face and up through his hair, patting it down slightly and rearranging the tank top he wore to bed.

"Nice bed head." The voice that had previously been shouting was now laced with sarcasm and its owner 's face displayed an incredulous expression. He was tall. _Really_ tall, with short-cropped blond hair and a muscular physique. He absolutely dwarfed Jean! His friend, whom I assumed was the one who murmured about the university, was also extremely tall. His face looked kind of innocent. His brown eyes were almost dopey and his brown hair flopped over his forehead.

"Reiner," Jean sighed as the blonde guy strode past him into our room, "why do you have to barge in here so early?"

"Come on Jean it's midday! Hardly early. Or did someone get up to something funky last night and you weren't able to get much sleep?" Reiner threw Jean an arrogant smirk as Jean grunted disapproval and slumped back into bed. "Okay, whatever. You need to get up or you won't be allowed to come to our game night next weekend."

Jean's head perked up at the words "game night" only to sink down again as he moaned.

"I can't come anyway. Mom wants me to go home on the weekend so she can pester me about 'what it's like to be independent!'" he put on a surprisingly accurate female voice for the last bit.

"Well, you know we don't do them very often so try and worm your way out of it," Reiner laughed at Jean's misfortune before turning to me. "So I'm assuming that's your roommate?" he said over his shoulder while looking at the heap of blankets that was me.

I stuck out a hand from the warmth of my blankety womb and waved at him, earning a bark of laughter from Reiner and a small chuckle from the other guy. It was the first sound I'd heard him make since he came in.

"I'm Reiner Braun," Reiner introduced himself as I slowly disentangled myself from my bed, becoming more distinguishable as a human being, "and this is Bertholdt Fubar. We live across the hall, room 113. You like gaming?"

I rubbed the sleep grit out of my eyes. "Yeah sure."

"Okay, you're invited next weekend then. There's gonna be a load of people there that I know from last year, so everyone can meet up and shit. It's usually good. And don't worry, you won't be the only Newbie."

"Um, you sure? I don't want to impose?"

"Jean you're roommate is so nice." Reiner spun around and dragged Jean out of bed by his ankle, dropping him on the ground with a _thump_. "You should try and be less of a dick and take a page from his book."

"Fuck off," Jean grumbled, but he stood up, grabbed the skinny jeans and red hoodie he'd been wearing yesterday and slouched into the bathroom.

Reiner and Bertholdt let themselves out and as they left I saw Bertholdt slip his arm around Reiner's waist. _So are they a thing?_

I quickly changed and when a fully dressed Jean came out of the bathroom I cleaned my face and teeth. When I came back out Jean was sitting on his bed glaring at something on his phone, but he looked up when he heard me.

"So, watcha wanna do?"

"Oh, uh, I don't mind." I was kind of curious about Bertholdt and Reiner so I asked Jean how he knew them.

Jean stood up and stretched his arms above his head as he said "Reiner's family lives across the street from mine. He's only a year older than me so we used to play together when we were kids. And I kind of know Bertholdt by default because he's with Reiner."

"So are they like, boyfriends then?"

"Yeah. You got a problem with that?" Jean raised an eyebrow at me.

"Oh, no not at all. I don't know, they just didn't really seem..." I felt like I was digging myself into a hole. "Ah never mind."

Jean grabbed his phone and glanced at the time.

"It's quarter to one, do you wanna go get something to eat? There's an awesome pizza place just off campus we could go to."

I grinned and grabbed my jacket off the back of my desk chair before heading over to the door.

"Pizza is the true key to my friendship, Jean." I grinned at him and he laughed, shoving his black Converse on and following me out the door.

The pizza place Jean took me to was only about five minutes away from the Trost campus. It was a little restaurant with two floors and when you opened the front door you were assaulted by about fifty different scents. Tomato, cheese, pepperoni, pineapple, anchovy. We grabbed a table and ordered and were served by a tall girl with freckles, her brown hair in a low ponytail. Her name tag read Ymir and she had a quick chat with us before she went off to get our pizzas.

"You know her?" Jean asked me and I shook my head in response. "Me either, she seems cool though."

When Ymir came back we learned that she was in Reiner's biology class at Trost but was living in her own apartment off-campus. She was attending the game night at Reiner and Bertholdt's next weekend.

Jean and I ate our pizzas and talked the rest of the afternoon away. We didn't talk about anything important. Movies and books and bands that we liked. Jean's favourite movie was Pacific Rim, his favourite book was The Shining by Stephen King and his favourite band was Muse. He liked all the scary stuff that I couldn't stand, my favourite movie being Jesus Christ Super Star (if that really counted, as the "movie" I owned was just a recording of a live performance of the musical), my favourite book was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and my favourite band was Fall Out Boy. Then we just blabbed on and on about the various concerts we'd been to and, when he learned I'd never been to a Fall Out Boy gig, Jean promised to take me to one someday.

All in all, our friendship grew stronger and stronger throughout that afternoon. I felt like I'd known Jean all my life, not just two days. I guessed that's what they mean in movies when they say people "clicked" with each other. Only in movies it was usually the protagonist and their love interest who clicked, not two guys eating a pizza together, because I wasn't gay. No homo and all that you know?

Before we knew it, it was nearly six o'clock and we were still at the pizza place (the name of which I still didn't know). We headed back to our dorm after buying one last pizza to eat when we got back. We got home, ate the pizza, packed our things for class the next day and started getting ready for bed.

As I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, I thought back over the day. Jean, at first, had seemed like a really antisocial kind of guy. Last night I had decided he was actually alright, and now, I felt like he was practically my best friend. Is it possible to become best friends with someone after knowing them for just two days? Who knew. Maybe we had just "clicked."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who reads and gives kudos and stuff! I got 10 kudos on the first day of chapter 1 being on here which is insane!!! I'm thinking of uploading every Friday although I don't know if that'll actually happen. I'm not very good at sticking to schedules. But I have chapter 4 complete and I really want to upload everything NOW but I know I can't because then I'll have nothing to upload for a while and cry.
> 
> Also I know these chapters are kind of short, I'm hoping to slowly increase the length of them but it'll probably be like, they'll all be similar lengths and then there'll suddenly be an epic one...


	3. All Of Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What would I do without your smart mouth? / ... You've got my head spinning, no kidding, I can't pin you down"
> 
> Literature class, new friends and a strange realisation.

A soft beeping sound reached my ears through the dream I was having. Something about a rainbow and Jean being a greedy leprechaun who wouldn't give me the rainbow gold. Quite rude really. I mean, I _earned_ that gold, I followed the rainbow all the way to the end! If you reach the end you're supposed to get the... um...

A soft beeping sound reached my ears through my sleep and I rolled over in my covers. I heard Jean moving, either still asleep or trying to ignore the alarm that indicated it to be seven o'clock in the morning. I slid my hand along the floor next to my bed until I located my phone and swiped the alarm away. Jean whined at his mother, telling her to leave him to sleep "just five minutes more Mom" and curled up into a ball. I stumbled out of bed and yanked his duvet off his bed and depositing it on the other side of the room.

"Gah!" he cried, sitting up and giving me a death glare, his face screwed up and his hair matted and sticking up adorably in every direction. Adorably? Weirdly. That's the word I was looking for. "You prick, Marco," he complained, swinging his legs off the bed and grabbing some fresh clothes before rushing into the bathroom calling "DIBS FIRST SHOWER!"

I gathered my clothes while I waited for Jean to finish and double checked I had everything ready for class. Then triple checked. Then quadruple checked... I didn't want to be "that kid who forgot his pencil case on the first day of class" okay? I did that in the first year of middle school and I swore to God I wouldn't do it again. I'd been paranoid ever since.

Jean came out of the bathroom and I went in and got ready for the day ahead, making sure my hair was tidy enough to be considered presentable. I wore my dark blue jeans and a grey t-shirt with a red tasselled scarf. Slipping my sneakers on I turned to Jean who was doing the same.

"Ready to get breakfast?" I asked. He nodded eagerly and we walked down the stairs together and through the reception area toward the dining hall.

It was already packed in there, obviously a lot of students had early classes to get to. Jean and I grabbed a tray each and joined the queue for food, I got jam on toast and Jean got a bacon sandwich, before finding an empty table to sit at. We ate in silence, both of us nervous about finding our classrooms and then attending the classes themselves. We wouldn't know anyone in our classes. The only other freshman I knew was Jean and we were taking different courses, so today I'd have to focus all my attention on meeting people taking the literature course like me.

As we stood up to leave, a short kid with blonde chin-length hair rushed to take our table before it could be snagged by someone else. He was promptly joined by a brown haired boy and an Asian girl, who smiled politely at me as Jean and I cleared our trays.

We hurried out of the cramped dining hall and into the cold morning air. The leaves on the trees were just beginning to brown and the few that already lay on the ground skidded past my feet in the breeze.

"So," Jean looked up at me, "what building are you in?"

I reached into my pocket for my timetable and read it out. "History of Language, room 301, Jinae block."

"Damn," Jean looked up from his timetable, "I'm in Shiganshina."

I looked wearily around the campus before turning back to Jean.

"Guess I'll see you at lunch then?"

"Yeah. Give me your number first so I can text you when I'm out?" He grabbed his phone out of his pocket and began tapping the screen.

My initial reaction to the gesture was excitement. He wanted my number! I was going to get Jean's number, without even asking for it myself! Then I realised that it was perfectly normal for guys to exchange numbers. Why was I so thrilled to be obtaining Jean's phone number? I'd never reacted that way when getting a girl's number, so why was Jean making my heart pound so fast?

"Yeah sure," I said nonchalantly, I took my phone out and gave him my number and then we went our separate ways. Not a minute after we split up and my phone was vibrating in my pocket. I took it out and unlocked it.

**_1 new message: Unknown number_ **

**hey there freckles -j**

Smiling to myself, I saved Jean's number to my contacts. I stared at the message for a minute or so before I noticed I was walking towards the wrong building.

 

*

 

The classroom was filled with quiet muttering as we waited for our teacher. I was the only person sat on their own, everyone else was grouped around tables in twos or threes and nobody seemed to want to introduce themselves to others.

The door burst open and the blond kid from breakfast hurried into the room.

"I'm so sorry I'm late," he squeaked, "my friend got into a fight and-" he stopped talking when he realised the teacher was missing. He glanced around and his eyes focused on the empty seat next to me. _Here we go. Time to put the "brave face" into action._

"Hey," he said as he approached me, "do you mind if I sit here? I don't really know anyone in this class."

"Sure thing," I smiled and moved my bag off the chair and onto the floor, "I'm Marco Bodt."

"Armin Arlert." Armin smiled and held out his hand which I shook.

We sat in silence for a bit, taking in our surroundings. It felt kind of awkward so I was glad when Armin broke the silence by inquiring about our professor's absence.

"I have no idea," I confessed, "I don't even know who our teacher is."

As I said this, the door flew open and a woman with a brown ponytail rushed into the room and to the front. She held her hands out in front of her, palms up and said excitedly, "You would not believe what just happened!"

It was Professor Hanji, the woman who was at the front desk of Rose when I arrived here on Saturday.

"So I just had to break up a fight between this freshman and a _senior!_ " She let out a cackle of laughter. "The kid tried to take on a senior. Oh but not just any senior. He just happened to be the captain of the rugby team!" She burst into fits of laughter before she zeroed in on Armin. "Hey you were there!" she cried, pointing at Armin. "Good job keeping that girl out, she looked like she was ready to murder!"

Armin smiled nervously and rubbed the back of his neck. I turned to look at him confusedly.

"My friend Eren. He has this habit of getting angry and picking fights and he basically never wins them so it's up to me and Mikasa to break them up before he gets himself killed."

I assumed Eren and Mikasa were the two people he was with this morning. That Eren guy did look kind of angry.

As Professor Hanji began talking about what we would be studying that year, Armin and I took the opportunity to get to know each other. Looked like we'd be sitting together for the whole semester, if not the year.

The two hour class passed quickly and Armin and I left together. Armin was really cool. He was wickedly talented at writing and, like me, he liked a lot of musicals. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and turned it on.

**_5 new messages: Jean_ **

 

**from: Jean 10:02**

**hey im out of class**

 

**from: Jean 10:06**

**r u there?????**

 

**from: Jean 10:14**

**ok did u give me a dead number bc this is stupid?**

 

**from: Jean 10:15**

**or r u just ignorin me?**

 

**from: Jean 10:18**

**actually ur probs still in class hahaha**

 

I quickly typed out a reply

 

**to: Jean 10:32**

**I'm out now! Sorry, my class was longer than yours! Where do you want to meet?**

 

**from: Jean 10:33**

**yeah u should be sorry. meet by the fountain by Rose?**

 

I started walking toward our meeting point before remembering Armin.

"Do you wanna come meet my friend Jean with me?" I asked.

His face lit up at the invitation, "Yeah sure!" He caught up with me and we wandered to the fountain.

When we got there Jean was perched on the edge of the fountain with his phone to his ear. As we approached him I heard him say "Okay, I love you too, bye," before hanging up and putting his phone in his pocket.

"Hey!" I called, waving. He smiled back. "This is Armin, he's in my history of literature class and we ended up sitting together. Armin this is Jean, my roommate."

Armin and Jean shook hands and exchanged some "hello"s and "nice to meet you"s before we all sat down on the fountain.

The three of us chatted for a while and we discovered that Armin and I had gone to the same elementary school, although we didn't remember each other at all. Jean had another class in the afternoon so Armin and I wandered around the campus and ended up at his dorm in Maria where we played video games. He was awesome at Mario Kart.

Eren turned up at about two o'clock, Mikasa not far behind him. They were both taking the Physical Education and Sports course. Eren and Armin were living in the same dorm and Mikasa was on the floor above with a girl named Sasha.

On the Wednesday of our first week at Trost I met the girlfriend of Ymir, the waitress from the Pizzeria. She was a very little blonde girl with dazzling blue eyes, not unlike those of my dad and sister, who introduced herself as Christa when she sat next to us in characterisation class. She was a really sweet and genuine girl, quite quiet but she spoke her mind, kind of similar to her girlfriend actually, only Ymir had been a lot louder and not afraid to bash people's opinions when I met her.

Two days later and I will still confused about my reaction to Jean giving me his number. I tried not to think about it but... It was just strange. I'd never felt that kind of excitement towards anyone before. I didn't know if it meant anything or if I was just over-thinking it. I mean there was no way I could _like_ Jean, I just didn't roll that way, you know? I was probably just excited to have made my first new friend... Probably.

The weekend rolled by all too quickly. Jean was going home for the two days to see his mom and dad and catch up with them and I didn't know why, but the thought of two whole days without Jean seemed kind of daunting.

We were sitting on the floor in our room watching some random show on the crappy TV I'd brought with me. It was nearly eleven and Jean hadn't packed anything yet.

"So are you even going home this weekend or are you already so obsessed with me after just one week that you can't bear to leave?" I teased.

Jean let out a bark of laughter. "Yeah that's what it is. I'm fucking in love with you, didn't you know Marco?" My heart skipped a beat. "Nah, I talked to my mom and she said I can go home next weekend instead. You know, so I can go to Reiner's game night. Reiner's kind of a crap host but his competitiveness when he's gaming makes up for it."

"Oh right. It sounds cool, I'm looking forward to it."

"Yeah me too. I invited Armin and co. that alright?" Jean stood up and wandered over to the mini fridge at the end of his bed, grabbing a can of cola. "You want anything?"

"Nah I'm good. I didn't know you were friends with Armin?"

"I'm not particularly," Jean came back and sat down next to me with his legs crossed, "I just didn't want you to be too lonely tonight. I mean, I know quite a few people who are going and I didn't want it to be like, I'm the only person there who you'll know."

"You didn't have to do that," I laughed, "I'm not _that_ bad at making friends, you know." I was grinning like a fool. He'd considered my well being tonight. He'd thought about me and tried to make me happy, and that thought alone made me happier than I'd care to admit.

"Yeah, well," Jean popped the lid of his cola open and took a swig, "can't have you being the only literature loser there can we?"

I smacked him on the arm, but laughed with him. In that moment I felt content. I felt like a star had fallen from the sky and landed next to me, warming me and keeping me company. I reached behind me, grabbing a sweatshirt that was lying on the floor and pulling it over my head.

"Um..." Jean poked my arm to get my attention, "dude, that's mine."

I looked down and found that I was, indeed, wearing Jean's hoodie. It was the red one that he wore this time last week. It was soft and warm and it smelled... like him...

"Ah, whatever," Jean waved his hand at me in dismissal, "keep it on, it's the best hoodie in the world right?"

The sweatshirt was large on Jean so it fit me well. I pulled the sleeves over my hands and breathed in Jean's scent. Musky, some kind of aftershave that had a hint of rose in it. It reminded me of Turkish Delight. I nodded an agreement to Jean and huddled into the scent of the fallen star.

Then the star hit me. Not literally, just, mentally.

I realised that I had just referred to my roommate as a fallen star.

I realised that my heart thudded when he joked about loving me.

I realised that Jean Kirschtein meant a _lot_ more to me than I thought he ever would.

I realised that I... maybe... _liked_ Jean. Yeah, "No homo" my ass Marco.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there we go! Freckles and J are now best friends but FRECKLES HAS FEELINGS! I feel like this is the cheesiest declaration of love ever, or at least that I've read... I hope you're liking the story so far! I've got some interesting stuff happening in the next chapter (which I can't wait for you guys to read!) and so yeaahhhh... The "no homo"s are all out of the way now so we're only gonna get more feels and lurrrve
> 
> Thank you for reading and I really hope you're enjoying it! :D Thanks for all the kudos and stuff too :) x


	4. Breakeven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm still alive but I'm barely breathing / just praying to a God that I don't believe in / ...they say bad things happen for a reason / but no wise words gonna stop the bleeding / ... when a heart breaks no it don't break even"
> 
> A game night, a boyfriend and a heartbreak.

When Jean and I arrived at Reiner and Bertholdt's at nine o'clock we could hear the music from Mario Kart and the shouts of a group of people through the door. Jean knocked and we waited for a minute or so before Ymir's voice yelled "REINER THERE IS SOMEBODY AT THE DOOR. GET OFF YOUR ASS AND LET THEM IN!" which was promptly followed by Reiner's reply of "BITCH I'M WINNING THIS RACE YOU LET THEM IN! FUCKING SHIT! CONNIE I'LL KILL YOU FOR THAT!"

A few more curse words were exchanged and then the door clicked open to reveal a battered and bruised looking Ymir.

She nodded us in and shut the door behind us. Reiner and Bertholdt were sat on the floor playing Mario Kart with a girl with brown hair and a boy with hair cut so short I couldn't tell what colour it was. Reiner didn't acknowledge us but Bertholdt turned around and gave us a shy smile, causing him to drive straight off the side of a bridge.

The room was packed. It was a Rose dormitory, like mine and Jean's, so it was only one room with a bathroom and there were probably too many people there. The window was wide open but it was still far too hot and all in all, it probably wasn't the best idea, but Jean had promised me it would be fun so...

Ymir took us around the room introducing us to everyone. The room was the same layout as mine and Jean's, with the television and gaming consoles on one of the desks. On Reiner's bed were Armin, Eren and Mikasa. The brown haired girl playing Mario Kart was Sasha, Mikasa's roommate, and the guy with short hair was  called Connie. He lived in Maria. A bored looking girl with blonde hair called Annie was sat on Bertholdt's bed with Christa. They lived together in Sina. There were twelve people there altogether. Definitely too many for such a small room.

Jean and I sat on the only vacant space, the floor, with Ymir and while we watched Reiner attempt to beat Connie to a pulp by pelting him with red shells, I inquired about Ymir's injuries.

"I got into a fight," she stated. "Some bastards were trying to hit on Christa so I showed them my ace backhand and upper cut."

I laughed nervously at the look on her face: a mixture of pride, excitement and rage. It was kind of terrifying.

"She was so brave," Christa piped up over the game's music. "I don't think anyone on campus will want to cross her the wrong way now. A lot of people saw it." She giggled sweetly and trotted over to peck her girlfriend on the cheek before sitting in her lap.

We sat like that for about an hour, eating the slightly soft crisps that had been placed in bowls and dotted around the room, drinking the terrible beer that Ymir had managed to sneak in from off campus, playing video games, joking about how competitive Reiner, Eren and Jean were and how terrible Armin and I were at them all. I felt the closest to Jean I had since we went to the pizzeria last weekend. We were laughing and joking together, playing against each other and he teased me when we were playing some kind of shooting game. I managed to get myself killed before we'd even made it past the first checkpoint.

Ever since that morning, when I'd recognised my feelings for Jean and actually accepted them, I couldn't stop noticing all the little things I liked about him. I loved the way his brow furrowed when he was concentrating on the game. I loved how he poked me when I screwed up. I loved his smiles, the cocky half-smiles and the full, genuine ones that he only seemed to give to me. I loved how little he was, and at one point I caught myself accidentally thinking about how comfortably he'd fit curled up in my arms. I stopped myself there and started throwing random thoughts of various games and foods around my head. It's not like people can read minds but better safe than sorry... right? Man, I had it bad.

I was looking inconspicuously at Jean, admiring the way his hair fell almost in his eyes, when there was a knock at the door. Everyone looked up from what they were doing, startled. Everyone who I knew to be invited tonight was already there and we hadn't ordered any food or anything. Maybe we were making too much noise and annoying the surrounding dorms. I glanced around the room, everyone looked kind of confused. All, but Reiner, who had a knowing smirk plastered on his face.

"Hey, Jean, can you get that?" he asked politely. It was very out of character.

Jean's gaze shifted between Reiner and the door a few times in shock before he got slowly to his feet, shuffled to the door and opened it. Then he froze. I couldn't see who was outside from my position on Reiner's bed, but I had a perfect view of Jean's face. Shock flitted across his features, quickly replaced by confusion, quickly replaced by the biggest, most beautiful smile to ever grace my eyes. And it wasn't directed at me.

Jean launched himself forward, onto the person who stood outside, and the muffled laughter of Jean and the stranger bounced into the room. I could hear them talking, giggling, whispering, not quite able to make out what they were saying, then there was a moment of silence in which Connie, who was sat right by the door and watching the entire exchange, let out a wolf whistle and shouted for them to "get a room damn it!" Did they just..?

Suddenly, Jean had returned, left hand held in the grip of another guy.

"Guys," Jean said breathlessly, "This is Nac. Nac this is, well, everyone, I'll introduce you all later." There was a chorus of "hi Nac," everyone sounding either sarcastically happy or just pissed off. Reiner had paused the game of Call Of Duty that everyone had been engrossed in.

Jean started moving back to where he was previously sitting, next to me (crap), dragging Nac along with him and the game of COD continued, filling the room with noise again. I had a pretty good idea of who this Nac guy was, and I didn't want him there, holding Jean's hand, all smiles and holding Jean's hand. Did I mention he was holding Jean's hand?

"Marco!" Jean called to me over the loud game. "I don't think I've ever mentioned Nac before. Um, Nac this is my roommate, Marco. I think I was telling you about him the other day?"

Nac held out his hand and I begrudgingly shook it, but with a polite smile on my face.

"Yeah I remember, nice to meet you Marco."

"Yeah," I said, "you too." Not.

"So yeah," Jean continued, "Marco this is my boyfriend, Nac."

So _that's_ what heartbreak feels like.

Nac was a couple of inches taller than me, his black hair spiked up off of his forehead revealing his deep brown eyes. His features were strong and defined and he had a muscular build. Probably a swimmer or something. He was definitely good looking and, wait, he was gorgeous. As a gay guy, I knew that he wasn't simply "good looking," he was hot, okay? Nac looked like the kind of guy who could be on the front page of a magazine, he could have done advertisements for cologne, he wasn't my type but he and Jean looked almost perfect together, and that felt like a knife wound through my chest.

I gave one more half-hearted smile to Nac and turned my attention back to Call Of Duty, but I was only seeing the game in front of me, I wasn't taking anything in. All I could think of was Nac and all I could feel was hurt. I couldn't decide what hurt the most, though: the fact that Jean was now completely out of reach, or the fact that he'd never once so much as mentioned having a boyfriend. After a week of being as close as we were, I couldn't believe that he'd not said anything to me about him. Also, this shed light on the fact that Jean was, in fact, interested in guys. That brought even more pain, knowing that I was in with a chance, but it had been snatched away by Nac. It was like being at the beach on a beautiful, sunny day, only to have your ice-cream stolen by a greedy seagull.

I tried to concentrate on the video games but my mind kept wandering back to Jean and my eyes kept focusing on his hand in Nac's, or Jean sitting in Nac's lap, the way I imagined him with _me_ just an hour before. The whispers in each others' ears, the laughter and absent-minded touches. The way they looked at each other, Jean's golden eyes, deepened by his feelings, his love. I wanted that. Now that I knew I couldn't have it, I wanted it even more than before! Less than ten minutes after Nac had arrived I had excused myself and gone into the bathroom to try and pull myself together. When I returned, I sat on the opposite side of the room, but this only meant that I had a better view of the couple.

I wanted to feel angry. I wanted to be able to hate Nac, but I couldn't. I didn't know how long they'd been together, I didn't even know Nac and, going by the look on Jean's face, Nac made him truly happy. I'd never been able to pull Jean's lips into a smile like that; I'd never been able to make his eyes sparkle like that; I didn't know if they were together for good or if I would maybe, someday, have the chance to try.

I was slowly shredding a sweet wrapper when I felt the bed sink with the weight of someone sitting next to me. I looked up to see Armin staring me down with a knowing look in his blue eyes.

"Are you okay?" He asked.

I took a breath, about to say yes, brush it off as though it were nothing, but something caught my eye. Jean had just won a round of whatever game they were playing now. He leaned back, arching himself so that he was looking behind him. Nac, who was sitting behind him, one leg on either side of Jean, leaned forward and placed a delicate kiss on Jean's lips. My stomach dropped. It felt as though the world had opened up beneath me and I was just falling, falling... My heart rate rocketed and I could feel my face burning with jealousy. I pulled my knees up to my chest and shook my head at Armin. He sighed.

"I know it's hard," he said quietly, "but you're gonna have to try and ignore them. It's going to sound really harsh too, but there's probably nothing you can do about it Marco. They've been dating for a year and a half, according to Reiner. Nac's only here for today though. He's going to Australia to study over there. So it won't last long."

I shook my head again. "No, Armin, you don't get it. It's not the fact that I have to watch them..." I trailed off. Was I going to tell Armin? He was smart, he'd probably already figured out I had a crush on Jean, like a stupid schoolgirl. That was most likely the reason he even came to talk to me in the first place.

"It's the fact that it's not you, isn't it?" Armin was watching the television but his eyes weren't focused on it properly. I sighed. He was right. I didn't say anything else and decided to try watching the others game instead. I should probably try and talk to some people, make some new friends, but I really wasn't in the mood to socialise.

Jean and Nac were whispering to each other again and Jean's face turned red when Nac said something to him. They both quickly stood up and started walking toward the door and suddenly, they were gone. I felt as though this should be a relief for me but I had a pretty good idea where they were headed. I wouldn't be able to go home for another couple of hours.

"How did you know?" I asked Armin, almost inaudibly.

"I only just figured it out," he confessed. "I saw the way you were looking at them when you were sat with them, and then when they started getting couple-y you left. At first I thought maybe you felt uncomfortable, you know, because you and Jean are pretty close right? But then you kept glancing weirdly at them and... yeah."

Damn he was good. Or I was just an idiot for not trying to hide my emotions. A soft sparking noise caught my attention and I looked up to see Ymir lighting a cigarette. That was my chance to leave. I stood up and stretched out my arms and legs.

"Reiner!" I called across the room and he looked up. "I'm gonna head out."

"Alright," he quickly scrambled over the bodies sitting on the floor and came to see me out, "is everything alright?"

"Yeah," I scratched the back of my neck, "it's just Ymir's smoking over there and I have pretty bad asthma so I just wanna be safe. I'm kind of tired now anyway."

I waved goodbye to everyone and left promptly. The corridor outside was unnervingly silent after the loud and boisterous noise in Reiner and Bertholdt's room. The air was a lot cooler though.

 _What now?_ I couldn't go back to the dorm for a while, Jean and Nac were probably still...

A walk. A nice walk in the outdoor air would do me good, help me clear my head. I hurried down the two flights of stairs, through the reception area and out the front doors. Pleasant, cool air hit my face as soon as the doors opened and I let out a sigh of contentment. The sky was black but clear of any clouds and the few stars that were visible through the light pollution of the city of Trost shone like fireflies. I took my phone from my pocket to check the time. _10:58_ shone up at me as well as

**_1 new message: Jean_ **

I opened it quickly, maybe Nac had left already and he was wondering where I was.

**from: Jean     10:26**

**hey. ive gone back to our room 4 a bit w nac bc ive not seen him in a while. dont worry about hurrying back**

I scoffed. He was acting as though I hadn't realised they'd left. Did he think I was completely oblivious? They were all over each other before they disappeared. They were basically eye-fricking.

I walked down the front steps of Rose and just... on. I wasn't paying attention to where I was going, I just wandered aimlessly, my mind still focused on the look on Jean's face when Nac had turned up. Since when had I started pining for Jean like an obsessive fourteen year old girl?

I shoved my phone back in my pocket and quickened my pace. Time to burn off some of this weird anger. It wasn't really anger though. It was just a strange mix up of various emotions that was easier to dub as anger. Jealousy seemed to be the main one, accompanied by loss, upset, heartbreak and... betrayal.

My crush on Jean aside, he hadn't even _mentioned_ that he had a boyfriend. I had absolutely no idea. We were good friends as well! I mean, yeah, we'd only met a week ago but remember that thing I was saying before about how we "clicked?" We became best friends in just a few days, really. I'd never had a friend like that and the fact that he'd not told me something so important in his life really just... it made me feel as though maybe he didn't trust me. Maybe he thought I'd hate him if I knew he was gay. Fat chance, seeing as I didn't exactly like girls either!

I kicked a stone and it bounced off the fountain in front of me. I'd made my way to the fountain near Rose where I'd met Jean and introduced him to Armin. A memory was surfacing through the fog of feelings that had been stirring throughout the evening. When Armin and I had just arrived at the fountain, Jean was already there.

_When we got there Jean was perched on the edge of the fountain with his phone to his ear. As we approached him I heard him say "Okay, I love you too, bye," before hanging up and putting his phone in his pocket._

Nac...

My daydreaming was interrupted by my phone buzzing in my pocket.

**_1 new message: Jean_ **

I sighed. Was this something important or was he saying "don't come home yet remember?"

I unlocked my phone and read the message anyway.

**from: Jean     11:08**

**u feel like coming home anytime soon?**

Exactly what I thought. I ignored him, shoving my phone away and continuing on past the fountain. My phone vibrated again.

**1 new message: Jean**

**from: Jean     11:09**

**marco please come home**

And again

**from: Jean     11:09**

**marco?**

I really didn't want to speak to Jean. I placed my phone in my pocket again and ignored it the next two times it vibrated. The third time, though, I looked. I was getting annoyed.

**_3 new messages: Jean_ **

**from: Jean     11:13**

**look i dont know if u hate me or what bc ive done nothing wrong but please come home!**

**from: Jean     11:15**

**do u hate me?**

**from: Jean     11:21**

**if u hate me please tell me why! im sorry!**

The fourth time my phone vibrated, it didn't stop. Jean was calling me?

"Hello?"

The sniffling that I heard from the other end of the line almost tore my heart in two.

"Marco?" Jean's voice was small and his throat sounded as though it were dry from crying.

"Jean?" I was panicking. "Jean are you okay? Did something happen?"

"Marco please come home," Jean choked, "I don't want to be alone right now."

My heart was racing. What had happened? Was he ok? If Nac had hurt him I swear to God...

"Jean, calm down. I'll be there in two minutes okay?"

A muffled "okay" replied and I hung up before sprinting back to Rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OOH CLIFFHANGER MUCH!!! I really like this chapter, I think it's my favourite so far.
> 
> Chapter 7 is being written at the moment ohh!! I literally cannot believe how many people are reading this it's completely insane!! 
> 
> Thanks again to everyone who reads and leaves kudos or a comment it really means a lot!! Hope you enjoyed this chapter :3 
> 
> LOVE TO YOU ALL <3 (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
> 
> (I found a page full of kawaii emojis and I'm kind of obsessing over them they're SO CUTE! ಥ⌣ಥ hehehe)


	5. I'll Be Okay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "When you're down and lost / and you need a helping hand / when you're down and lost along the way / oh, just tell yourself / ah, I'll be okay"
> 
> Bruises, an invitation, and an interesting thought.

I raced back past the fountain and up the stairs to the dorm. I had to get to Jean. I had to make sure he was okay. Knocking hurriedly on our door I called in to Jean.

"Jean? Jean are you in there are you okay?" Suddenly I remembered I had my key and grabbed it from my back pocket. My fingers fumbled as I tried to insert it into the lock and it took me several attempts before I was able to finally enter the dorm.

Jean was sitting in the centre of the room, his hoodie falling off one of his shoulders, his left shoe abandoned at the end of his bed. His hair was mussed and a large handprint coloured his face red. His usually bright and intense eyes were dull and moist with tears that were spilling over and rolling down his cheeks. He looked up when I walked in and all I saw was the fear in his eyes before he relaxed at the sight of me.

"Jean, what happened?" I asked timidly.

He stood up and walked over to me, grasping the right side of his abdomen and limping slightly. Stopping about a foot away, he looked up at me, pain visible across his features.

"Nac, he..." Jean hesitated. "He started shouting, saying he didn't like me rooming with a guy. I started shouting back, saying he didn't trust me and he just... he kind of just lost it you know?" He raised a hand to his face and touched the redness gently. His voice sounded small and it wavered with every word.

"He did this then?"

"Yeah. He threw me onto the floor, threw my shoe at me, kicked me in the stomach. He stood on my leg too but it's okay, I don't think he broke anything." He gave me a soft, heart-not-in-it-at-all smile.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Yes," Jean said instantly, then he rethought. "No." He sighed and walked over to his bed, sitting down with his head in his hands. "We've been dating for nearly two years. I thought I loved him Marco, I really did. I mean now I don't, I'm terrified, I don't want to go back to him. He can fuck off to Australia and never come back for all I care." His eyes stared straight ahead, determined but doubtful. "Marco he was so nice. He cared about me, at least he was good at pretending he did."

I didn't really know what to say. The fact that Nac had abused Jean like this made me so furious, but Jean needed me to be calm right now so I pushed my thoughts of Nac to the back of my head and focused of comforting Jean. I sat down on the bed next to him and pulled him into a hug. He rested his head on my shoulder and pulled his knees up to his chest, wincing slightly at the pain it caused.

"Are you sure nothing's broken? Maybe we should take you to the hospital?"

Jean stroked the back of my hand with his thumb, "No it's okay. I've broken bones before and this hurts but not that much."

I sighed. "Okay, but if it doesn't feel any better in the morning I'm taking you to the on-campus doctor alright?"

Jean laughed lightly at my worry. "Okay. Thank you."

"For what?"

"Being Marco."

I smiled. I was all Jean needed then. A warmth spread through my body that seemed to radiate from the points where Jean was leaning against me, his love, even if it was only platonic, made me feel happy. But a part of me still hurt, because Jean was hurting. Nac had hurt my best friend, physically and emotionally.

"It's okay," I whispered, "Just promise me you'll end it with him?"

There was no reply; Jean had fallen asleep in my arms and, with a small smile on my face, I soon followed.

 

*

 

Light was falling onto my face through the large windows of our dorm, rising me from the depths of sleep. Stretching out my arms and legs from their curled up position, I was made aware that I was alone. Wasn't Jean with me last night? I opened my eyes to find myself still on Jean's bed, but he was gone.

I clambered to my feet and quickly neatened the covers before running my hands over my face. "Jean?" I called.

"In here!" Jean's voice replied through the closed door of the bathroom. "Give me two minutes."

Wandering over to my side of the room, I grabbed some fresh clothes from my wardrobe and changed. I'd fallen asleep wearing my clothes from yesterday and they smelled of bad beer and sweat from last night. Gross.

Jean emerged from the bathroom, tugging the hem of the red plaid shirt he was sporting, and hurried over to me to wrap his arms around me in a bear hug. Only it was more like a cub hug seeing as he fit perfectly underneath my chin.

"Morning?" I said, although it sounded like a question.

"Sorry," Jean took a couple steps backward, "just, thanks for being there for me last night." His face had bruised up pretty impressively and was tinted a deep purple colour. He refused to show me the marks on his ribs, saying they hurt and were bruised but he was positive nothing was broken, poking his chest a few times as proof. "I got beat up pretty bad," he chuckled and I frowned slightly, my frame stiffening. "Marco, relax will you? I've already called Nac and ended it with him. I was strong and I told him if he came near me again then I'd call the cops on him. We won't be seeing him anytime soon, okay?"

I sighed and relaxed a bit, pulling Jean into another hug. "I was scared," I owned up. "I thought something seriously bad had happened. I mean, this _is_ bad but like, I thought it was going to be so much worse."

"Yeah, I know," Jean cooed, returning the hug, "I was pretty scared too you know."

I smiled slightly as Jean snickered.

The bruise on his face turned a strange shade of blue after a couple of days and after a week it had faded to yellows and greens. It looked like someone had thrown some strange salad dressing on him, which I teased him about, if only so that I could hear his laugh. He never did show me the bruising on his chest and stomach, although he said they were taking slightly longer to heal than his face. I made sure to only shove him gently when he beat me at video games. I did, however, end up taking him to the on-campus doctor on the second day when he tried to run and fell almost immediately from the pain in his leg. The doctor told us he had suffered terrible bruising to the muscle and by working it and walking on it he was slowing the healing process. She issued him a pair of crutches and a few support socks and sent us on our way, Jean looking very disgruntled and smacking me around the ankles with a crutch.

Five weeks passed and Jean was allowed to walk on his leg again. He'd probably been alright for about a week already but I didn't want to take any chances. When I was nine my mother tore her Achilles tendon and had it bandaged up for ages before she was able to walk properly again, and even after all that time, within just a few days, it had become swollen and bruised again. So yeah, I made Jean shut up and bear with it for a week longer than really necessary.  

During the "damaged days," as Jean titled them, we hung out a lot with Reiner and Bertholdt. I became more familiar with Reiner's boisterous attitude and jokes that weren't meant to be hurtful but were really just plain rude. Bertholdt never became any more vocal, choosing to sit quietly and observe the conversations going on around him than to really participate. Armin and I got a lot closer too. We sat together in all of our classes and hung around together sometimes afterwards, when I wasn't slaving over Jean and his annoying need to treat me like a butler while he was still recovering. Eren seemed to just be angry all the time, a trait that didn't go down well with Jean as Mikasa, Armin and I had to take them away from each other before one of them was killed multiple times. It became almost a ritual. Go to Eren and Armin's, play video games, Eren starts beating Jean at the game, Jean gets pissy, Jean threatens Eren, Eren shouts back, they throw their controllers at each other, Jean and I leave. It was comforting that Armin and Mikasa didn't seem to mind.

On two of the five weekends that had passed, Jean and I had gone home for the two days. It was brilliant to be with my family again for a while but it was strange not having Jean with me, when you spend all your time with someone you get more attached to them than you think. I went ice skating with my parents and two younger sisters and on one of the Saturdays we had dinner out with Jenna and her family and Poppy and her fiancé, Michael, were there too. I didn't speak to Jean much over those weekends, just a couple of text messages to find out what time we should meet back at school. I figured he was probably busy catching up with his family though, as I barely had a spare moment.

As terrible as it may sound, I quite enjoyed the Damaged Days. Jean somehow managed to convince one of his teachers, Miss Ral, that his leg could get hurt if he were to eat in the dining halls during lunch and she trusted him enough to let us hang out in her class room for the hour occasionally. Jean showed me all of his art work; from the little sketches of eyes that filled his notebook to the incredible A3 oil painting of a man, silhouetted against the rising sun, holding a sword in each hand and standing in a field full of yellow zinnia flowers. He faced away from us, looking up at the sky that took up two thirds of the canvas and swirled with blacks and purples and pinks, tiny white dots and smudges littering the very top of the image. The thing I really loved about the painting was the faint but huge, feathered wings coming from the soldier's back.

"Wings symbolise freedom," Jean had explained, "And yellow zinnia flowers represent death."

"So he's free from death?"

Jean had frowned at the picture, tilting his head as he observed it. "Not quite, more like he wants to be free but he's tied to his duties by the memory of those who've died, that's why the wings are faint and eroding." Jean's amber eyes glowed with the pride of his work. He had every right to be proud of it, it was a beautiful piece and I could see the care he had put into every stroke of his brush.

There was another A3 canvas with a rough sketch of Nac that looked as though it had been abandoned. I asked Jean what he was going to do with it, to which he replied, "I was originally gonna paint it with golds and whites and browns you know, like, soft, warm colours. I want to finish it though, because even though the guy's a dick I think I did pretty well on the anatomy. I might do like, slashes of random colours but all dark ones and reds and stuff, and then just do the outline of his features in white? I'm not sure though. Part of me wants to scrap it."

It was now the cool, crisp morning of Sunday, October twenty-seventh. Jean's leg had been free from support socks and crutches for a week and we were on our own in our dorm, Jean sketching something at his desk and me sitting on my bed with my laptop, furiously trying to write a character description while suffering from terrible writers' block.

Jean's pencil clattered onto the wooden desk for about the eleventh time in the past five minutes as he reached for his eraser which had shrunk significantly since he started drawing. He cursed quietly as he gently rubbed out the error.

"Having some trouble there?" I asked.

Jean moaned, "I hate drawing hands with a fiery, burning passion. I just can't get it right!"

"Yeah I know the feeling," I acknowledged his pain.

"Why? What are you doing?"

"Character description and development. It's hard to create a believable character anyway but I'm not in the right frame of mind right now." I sighed and closed my laptop, dropping it unceremoniously onto my pillow before sliding down off my bed and onto the floor. "Do you wanna do something?"

Jean pushed his wheely chair backwards into the room and stretched his arms up, over his head. "Yeah sure what-"

_Knock, knock, knock._

"- how fucking rude I was in the middle of a sentence." Jean looked at me. "Get that?"

"Ugh." I clambered slowly to my feet, like an old man who'd just woken up, and trudged over to open the door. "Go away."

"Oh wow thanks," Ymir looked disapproving. "I was gonna invite you to my Halloween party too."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "What kind of party is it?"

"Halloween, dumbass." She barged passed me into our dorm and Christa appeared out of thin air to follow her in, giving me a happy smile on her way. "Kirschtein." Jean grunted in response. "You coming to this party then?"

"When? Where? Will there be that shitty beer from Reiner and Bertholdt's place again? I know you can afford better than that, and I think it made me ill."

Ymir strode over to Jean and smacked her hand on his shoulder. "You think I'd risk getting nice and expensive beer confiscated here? No beer on campus, and there's no way I was gonna let anything good go to waste, okay?" She turned to me, flinging her arm around Christa. "It's on Friday and it's at my place. Christa's volunteered to give people lifts there and back so you don't have to worry about knowing where you're going or keeping sober."

"But Halloween's on Thursday," Jean pointed out.

"Congratulations, do you want a prize? People have classes on Friday so we're doing it that evening and into the early hours of Saturday." Ymir let out a big laugh, throwing her head back. She grabbed Christa by the hand and lead her to the door. "I'll see you guys on Friday then. It's fancy dress and Christa will pick you up at eight." she said, and they were gone.

I slowly looked at Jean who was just kind of staring incredulously at the spot where Ymir and Christa had last been.

"So," he said, "did you want to do anything?"

We spent the rest of that Sunday doing what we did pretty much every Sunday: played video games and ordered pizza. Scratch that, we did it practically every day for crying out loud. However due to this I had learned that the pizzeria around the corner was called The Sawney. We tried to decide what we were going to dress as at Ymir's party and somehow ended up having a huge debate about whether a vampire or Bowser would win in a battle. In the end Jean decided to dress as Spiderman and I decided on a zombie, brains, blood, guts and all. Jean insisted I let him do SFX makeup on my face and neck and arms... basically, anything not covered by clothing, Jean wanted to make look like it was burned and rotting and just generally disgusting.

Jean got himself very excited about the idea of costumes and makeup and we spent a lot of time after classes that week buying clothes I could tear up and searching for a Spiderman suit for him. Suddenly it was Friday and I was making my way downtown, walking fast, faces pass and I'm home-bound doobeedee doobeedee doo... Well not quite but I was making my way back toward my dorm after my last class with Armin in tow. I had borrowed some of his notes for a class that I was struggling a bit with and had forgotten to give them back to him, so he was coming with me to get them.

"You know," Armin thought aloud, winning my attention from the text conversation I was having with Jean, "you and Jean have been practically inseparable recently. Him getting injured in that fight seems to have brought you closer."

I laughed and put my phone into my pocket. "You really think so?"

Armin cocked his head, a sly grin on his face. "Yup," he popped the end of the word. "You still have that massive crush on him too, don't you?"

I groaned. "Is it really that obvious?"

"Not really, I just have psychic powers," Armin said matter-of-factly. I looked up, grinning and raised an eyebrow at him. His face was deadly serious. My smile faltered. You know, it would explain a lot if he did have psychic powers. At Reiner and Bertholdt's gaming night wasn't I thinking about Jean and worrying about psychics?

"You were worrying before that someone might be able to read your mind." Armin stated and my face fell. I literally felt like my brain was waving a little white flag and screaming "I SURRENDER!"

Armin's poker face was gone and so was he. I looked around before glancing down to where the blond was crouched on the ground, clutching his stomach and absolutely losing his mind with laughter.

"I can't believe you actually believed me!" he chortled.

I huffed and grabbed the strap of my shoulder bag, walking away from him. "I didn't believe you in the slightest!" I called back to him, hearing him jogging to catch up with me. "I don't believe in supernatural stuff like that."

"Oh come on, lighten up!" Armin was wiping _actual_ tears from his eyes as he looked up at me. "Psychics aren't a supernatural thing either. It's believed that there were once psychic people who-"

"Armin that's really cool and I'm really sorry but I don't actually care," I interrupted. We walked up the front steps of Rose and into the lobby.

"Oh, how rude of you Marco," Armin laughed lightly as he called down the elevator. "Psychic powers aside, you do still like him, don't you?"

"I do," I said, "but I still don't know if I'm going to tell him or not, I mean, is it still too soon after Nac?"

Armin sighed, the elevator doors sliding shut and weird, calm music began to play from the small speakers above us. "I really don't know. To be perfectly honest, I'm not the best person to come to for relationship advice, but if I were you, I wouldn't wait too much longer if you really want to be with him. He's a pretty good looking guy, he might find someone else soon if you keep quiet for too long."

"I don't know about that," I laughed, "he doesn't really give people the chance to see how amazing he is as a person, he tends to push people away a lot, so his looks are the only thing he has going for him."

"You got close to him though, didn't you?" Armin inquired.

"Well, yeah," I hesitated. "I guess I didn't really have a choice though, you know? I mean, we're roommates, we're around each other _most_ of the time so if we didn't get along then life would suck for us." I laughed and the elevator doors finally pinged open. "And everyone else is only close to him thanks to Reiner."

Armin grunted and we walked down the hall to my dorm. I let us in and the room was empty. Dumping my bag on the floor by my bed, I wandered over to my desk and searched through the piles of paper that had accumulated until I found Armin's notes that I was looking for.

I handed them to him. "Here you go."

"Thanks," he said, taking the notebook and loose pieces of scribbled notes from me. "Good luck with Jean!" he snickered as he meandered to the door.

"Yeah, ha ha." My voiced was thick with sarcasm. "I hate to break it to you but I doubt I'll say anything for a while, I don't want things to be awkward at the Halloween party if he rejects me."

Armin gave me a knowing smile before leaving and closing the door behind him. I fell face first onto my bed, kicking my shoes off once I had landed.

I wanted to tell Jean, but at the same time, I didn't. I wanted to be able to have the friendship we have now, only with more hugs, and cuddling, and maybe kissing, and sex... what?

There was a knock at the door followed by a "I'm coming in, don't be naked." Jean was back.

I groaned internally. Why? Why did you have to interrupt my daydreams?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not too much to worry about! Jean's alright really, but Nac's bad bad bad bad bad. I feel kind of guilty because now when I watch SNK and if it's one of the early episodes where Nac's still there I'm just like "ugh." But Marco's totally head over heels for Jean by this point which I love to write :')
> 
> Also, apparently Saturday has become my upload day? But I'm really looking forward to showing you guys chapter 6! I'm so happy with it! 
> 
> I hope you're still enjoying this and thank you so much to everyone who leaves kudos and comments because you literally have no idea how amazing it is to hear that you guys like what I'm writing! 
> 
> When I started typing these notes I had like six things I wanted to say and now I can't remember any of them so I might update this at a later date ahaha oops.... .-.
> 
> EDIT: I REMEMBERED ONE!!! I wanted to say that I just can't believe that over four hundred people are reading this! It's insane O_o
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	6. Thriller

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Now is the time for you and I to cuddle close together, yeah / All through the night I'll save you from the terror on the screen"
> 
> Fake burns, guilty pleasures and real burns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm publishing this at stupid o'clock in the morning because I've had to get up really early to go to Summer in the City today and I knew that I wouldn't get a chance to upload later so maybe any Australian people reading will like this update time. It'll be up in the British evening again next week though!!

"I'm coming in, don't be naked."

I glanced at the clock on my desk which read 4:48. Jean's class ended at twenty to five so yeah, made sense that he was getting back now. My class had ended at half four but Armin and I had really dawdled back to my dorm.

"It's okay," I said as Jean entered the room, "I am fully clothed and ready to become a zombie!" Jean's face lit up as he laughed, ditching his bags under his desk and flopping onto his bed as I sat up on mine.

"I'm actually really excited for this!" He carefully took off his shoes then placed them in the bottom of his wardrobe. "I've been looking forward to it all day, and I've been looking through my make-up pallets and checking out what colours look best together to make it look the most realistic."

"By make-up I'm assuming you mean the special effects stuff rather than, like, eye shadow and false lashes?" I chuckled.

Jean looked across the room at me. "What? No I was gonna make you look like an angel. I was thinking I could use the expensive red lipstick my mom got me and maybe some crappy blue eye shadow. And I have some really long false lashes that would really make your eyes look big," he said sarcastically. I raised an eyebrow at him and breathed out a laugh, imagining Jean wearing the terrible-sounding make-up he'd just described.

"You're imagining me wearing that now aren't you?" Jean sighed.

 _Oh, my, God... Is_ everyone _in this school psychic?_ I thought. I really needed to watch what I was thinking.

"Funny," I said sarcastically, "what time do you think we should start getting ready then Mr Parker?"

"Hm, not sure. We've got about three hours before Christa's coming to get us so do you wanna start now? I'm not sure how long your make up will take that's the thing."

I nodded in agreement and Jean started fishing out his SFX make up kits and pallets. I noticed one of them was called "Bruising" and another was "Blood." I had high expectations. I quickly changed into the cheap, grey t-shirt and the khaki shorts I'd bought the other day and started hacking away at them with my scissors. I made sure to then fray the edges of the tears to make them look older.

"Come on then," I said as I stood up and put my arms out to the sides, "give it your all."

Jean grinned gleefully and brought over the many, many paints and brushed and sponges and bits and bobs he needed. He spread them all out on the floor and crouched down next to them, looking through them until he found the pallet he wanted. It was the "Bruising" one I'd seen earlier.

He dabbled his sponges in the different colours and got to work on rotting my legs, making them look bloody and gory. His hands were gentle, working carefully with the colours. He held my leg still with his left hand and smudged yellows and purples and blues on it with his right. His eyebrows furrowed with concentration and he stuck his tongue out slightly between his teeth. Truth be told he looked cute. He looked _really_ cute, and when I asked to sit down because I was losing feeling in my toes, he looked up at me with his gorgeous, topaz eyes and I'm not gonna lie there were some funky things going through my head. I could feel my face going red so I quickly stumbled backwards and fell onto my bed.

It took about an hour of Jean dabbling his sponges and brushes on my body until he was happy to start on my face. He had done an incredible job, really. There was a colossal burn on my right shoulder that went underneath my top and all the way down the right hand side of my rib cage. My skin was now a sickly yellow colour pretty much all over and the stuff that wasn't yellowed with age was bruised green. There were loose pieces of skin that he had made hang off and to be honest it looked absolutely disgusting. It was awesome.

I wasn't able to admire it as much as I wanted to though. My mind was preoccupied with the thought of how Jean's hands had felt travelling over my chest, how he had pushed my t-shirt up so that he could get to my stomach, the way it felt when he held my hand in his while he made it look burned and horrible. And then suddenly his face was right next to mine and he was grinning as he said something about the paints being kind of uncomfortable on your face at first. I could see in his eyes how he was enjoying himself. He was so close I could feel his breath on my face and I panicked about the tuna sandwich I'd eaten for lunch so I breathed through my nose.

I stopped paying attention to whatever pattern my thoughts were following and I instead let them run away as I focused on memorising Jean's face. From the eyebrows that were still pulled into a light frown to his golden brown hair that flopped over his forehead. The dark hair on the sides of his head and around the back was beginning to grow a bit too long. He needed a haircut, and the dark brown that I could see at the roots of the longer hair atop his head revealed that he did, in fact, dye it that golden colour. I took in his eyes, like honey caught in sunlight, and his thin, pink lips which were parted, letting his breath caress my face. He smelled like cigarettes, he must have been hanging around with Ymir earlier, but I could detect his scent underneath it. The only word I can think of to explain how Jean smelled is 'warm.' I'm really sorry that's a completely crap description too but, he just smelled like familiarity and comfort. Like your favourite blanket that's just been washed. I could actually smell the strong detergent he liked to use on his clothes, but he smelled slightly sweet, like honey, really, if that makes any sense...

Jean was like the golden boy. Golden eyes, golden hair, golden honey scent. He had a golden personality to go with it. He was cold and harsh and spoke his mind but at the same time he was caring and funny and a good companion.

Jean was looking expectantly at me. Balls... he'd said something hadn't he? And there I was, staring dreamily into his eyes like the lovesick loser I was.

"Sorry?" I said, my voice was small and my throat was dry. I swallowed and tried again.

"I said I'm finished," Jean repeated. "Have a look in the mirror you dumbass."

I stood up and stretched my arms and legs, earning a harsh "be careful dammit!" from Jean. I hurried to the mirror above the sink in the bathroom and let out a shout of fear before running back to the bathroom door.

"What is it?" Jean grinned at me, then his face fell. "There's not a spider in there is there?"

"No there's not a spider," I laughed and Jean relaxed. "Although you might want to conquer that fear if you want to have any hope of being Spiderman tonight." Jean stuck his tongue out at me and I inched back in front of the mirror and turned my face so I could see every angle of it. Jean had continued the burn up my neck and over the right side of my face. It looked... disgusting, really. But that's everything I was hoping it would be.

I spun around and grinned at Jean. "It looks awesome!" I cried and he stood up, laughing as he wiped his mucky hands on his old, paint splattered jeans.

"Stick your iPod on?" Jean requested. He nudged past me into the bathroom and started washing the strange mixture of colours off his hands.

"Yeah, sure." I grabbed my old iPod Nano 3 from the pocket of the jeans I'd been wearing that day and linked it up to Jean's trusty docking station on his desk. "What album?"

Jean thought for a moment before replying, "Just put on your top twenty-five or something." So I did just that. The first track, Boys Of Summer, began to play.

"You're into eighties music?" Jean looked up, one eyebrow raised and a surprised look on his face.

I shrugged. "Music is music, if it's good then I listen to it. I don't really care what decade it's from you know?" Jean looked kind of impressed.

"It's a good song actually," he mused. He murmured something afterwards but I didn't catch what we was saying. If I had to take a guess from reading his lips I'd say he'd said "bike rush nice oboe yey" but that doesn't make any sense. Basically what we can learn from this is that I can't lip read. I looked back over at him and he was mouthing along with the lyrics. I've gotta say, seeing the guy I had a _huge_ crush on miming to my favourite song was one of the cutest things I'd ever seen.

I sat down delicately on my desk chair, making sure I didn't smudge any of the body paint, and started tapping my foot to the beat of the music. Jean finished washing his hands as the next song, Piano Man by Billy Joel, started, and he chuckled to himself.

"What?" I laughed.

He sighed as he started taking the tags off his Spiderman suit. "Nothing," he said. "You just have a really interesting music taste."

I furrowed my eyebrows. "You say that like it's a bad thing?"

"No, no. It's all good music, just not the stuff I was expecting from you. Not when you used Fall Out Boy and Placebo as topics of conversation when we first met." He went into the bathroom with the suit and came out wearing it.

I laughed a bit and glanced at the time. "You're getting changed already?"

Jean looked up from where he was awkwardly trying to pull his jeans on over the top of the suit. "Yeah, why?"

I showed him the screen of my phone. "Well, we've still got about an hour before Christa will be here and-" The song changed.

A guitar riff... Jean's face dropped and then...

"I hopped off the plane at LAX with my dream and my cardigan."

"Marco?"

I nodded. "Yup?"

Jean straightened up. "Marco, why is this number three on your most played playlist?"

I scratched the back of my head lightly. _Quick! Think of an alibi! He can't know_ this _is my guilty pleasure! I mean, the whole point of a guilty pleasure is it's something people don't expect you to like but I think Miley Cyrus, and what's more it's_ 2009 _Miley Cyrus, is probably a bit_ too _strange._

"Oh, my sister uses my iPod sometimes," I lied smoothly, "and when she does she usually plays just this one song over and over!" Yeah, smooth like crunchy peanut butter.

Jean looked unbelieving. He breathed out a "sure, whatever," and continued his attempt to shimmy his skinny jeans up his legs. "It's okay man, I won't judge you. Everyone has a weird song that they like."

I frowned and chewed on my bottom lip. _Damn_ he looked good in that costume. We sat around listening to the eclectic mix of music on my iPod until there was a knock on our door at ten past eight. It was Reiner. He was dressed in a loose fitting green shirt that had been torn up a bit and brown shorts that reached his knees and then were slashed away and fraying. A pair of fluffy brown ears were perched atop his blonde hair and he had fake fangs in. Jean looked sceptically at him.

"I'm a werewolf," Reiner explained and Jean just nodded before grabbing his phone and shoving his old Converse on. I wondered if he even owned any other shoes. I put on a pair of flip flops that I could ditch quickly by Ymir's door when we arrived and we left with Reiner to meet Christa and Bertholdt in Ymir's car.

We discovered that Bertholdt was dressed as Frankenstein's monster, a rather good one actually, and Christa, who was Glinda the Good from the Wizard of Oz, apologised furiously for being late. It was only ten minutes. She had chosen the right character to dress as.

The five minute car ride to Ymir's was uneventful and slightly awkward as we sat in silence trying to find a radio station that wasn't playing Michael Jackson's Thriller. Ymir's house was pretty awesome. Not much bigger than my own house, it was had two floors with a big window at the front, showing the living room which was filled with pumpkins and dancing people, obnoxiously loud music playing from the sound system. It was on an estate with probably two hundred other houses, but tucked up a small driveway with one other house.

We hurried through the light rain that had begun to fall and barged through the front door of the red-bricked house. Ymir was dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West and standing in the hallway by the door to the living room. She threw her hands up when she saw us.

"Hey!" she called. "Cool you're the last lot! If you've got any drugs, hand them over now, nobody's allowed upstairs and if you get in a fight you're not ever coming back here but apart from that have fun!" She flashed us a grin and grabbed Christa's hand, pulling her into the kitchen with her. Berthold and Reiner squeezed past me and Jean and into the living room.

I peered over Jean's shoulder after them and saw the writhing mass of people on the other side of the open door. The music was already kind of making my head hurt.

Marco fact of the day: he doesn't usually attend parties. Game nights, sure, but parties? Not so much. Claustrophobia isn't really a friend to anyone at parties so I tended to avoid them. I hadn't known so many people were going to be at Ymir's Halloween do. I've always been fine with elevators but large crowds of people... no thanks.

I glanced over to the kitchen at the other end of the hall, then back at Jean, tapping him lightly on the shoulder. He moved his gaze from where he was confusedly looking at two people grinding against each other and looked at me instead.

"I'm gonna go hang with Ymir and Christa in the kitchen so I'll catch up with you later," I called to him over the thrumming bass.

"You not coming in?" Jean shouted back.

I shook my head and patted his shoulder once more before following Ymir's earlier route into the kitchen. It was cooler in there than the hallway and I dreaded to think how intense the heat in the living room must have been.

The kitchen was a decent size, split in two by a counter that went all the way around the edge of the right hand side and half way along the back of the room before sticking out. There was a table on the left hand side of the kitchen on which sat several different Halloween inspired dishes. Christa and Ymir sat on chairs by the table and Sasha, wearing a full chef's outfit, was busily cooking something in a wok.

"Hey dead man." Ymir raised a hand in greeting and I took a seat next to her. "Who beat you up then?"

"It was Jean," I said. "He has loads of cool effects makeup that he wanted to try out so I kind of let him run wild with them." I chuckled and Ymir let out a bark of laughter.

We sat in there for probably half an hour, just chatting, various people coming in to get a drink from the refrigerator or a plate of food from the table (the food really was amazing, Sasha couldn't half cook!) before Jean joined us, Spiderman mask missing and his hair ruffled and sweaty. Sexy.

"Hey looser," he said in greeting.

"Mean."

"Hardly," he laughed, grabbing a beer from the fridge and sitting on the vacant chair next to Christa. "So what's up?"

I glanced around at Ymir. She was giving me a weird look. Why was she giving me a weird look? It was that "I know something you don't know" look and it was really unnerving me.

"Not a lot really," I confessed to Jean.

"You enjoying yourself?" Ymir asked him.

"Yeah," Jean wiped the back of his hand over his forehead. "It's fucking hot in there though!"

Ymir applauded. "What did you think would happen? There's like fifty people here and there's not that much space."

"What did you think would happen?" Jean mimicked Ymir's words, putting on a whiny voice. That earned him a harsh smack on the arm from Ymir.

The two of them started bickering playfully and Sasha came over to sit with us, flopping onto the floor and leaning against the sticky-out counter with a sigh.

"Done!" She said, grinning. "Three hours of preparation and cooking but I'm finally done."

"A valiant effort from our beloved Sasha let's hear it for her!" Ymir burst into a round of "For She's A Jolly Good Fellow" which had Sasha back on her feet and bowing to us all.

"I'd like to thank my mom and dad for always believing in me and Ymir for buying the ingredients and also thanks to my hamster Stuart. I love you Stuart."

Christa giggled loudly and then blushed bright red which set the rest of us off into fits of laughter.

"Oh god," Jean laughed, clutching his side. There were tears rolling down Sasha's cheeks and Christa's face had turned as red as the tomatoes that were sitting in a dish in front of her. Ymir had taken to slowly pounding her fist on the table and I was wiping tears from my eyes, my stomach muscles aching. Someone I didn't know dressed as Dracula walked into the room and we all eventually calmed down.

We sat in slightly awkward silence while the guy took a drink from the fridge and leaned against the counter while he drank it. He was soon joined by a friend who pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, placed one between his lips and started rummaging in his pockets, presumably for a lighter.

"Hey!" Ymir shouted. "If you wanna smoke that's fine but open the window first right? There's such a thing as asthma." She looked at me when she said that and I smiled thankfully at her. "Reiner told me after you left the game night last month," she explained.

"Guys?" Christa grabbed our attention. "Do any of you smell that?"

"I can't smell shit," Jean complained. "I have a cold."

I looked at Ymir and then at Sasha who was sat on the floor, dramatically sniffing the air. Her eyes suddenly widened.

"That's gas!" she shouted.

Ymir suddenly leaped to her feet, pointing at the guy with the cigarette who had found his lighter.

"DON'T LIGHT THAT!" she screamed at him, her eyes huge and terrified.

It seemed to happen in slow motion. Christa spun around and fled out the back door, Jean sprinting alongside her. Ymir was frozen, staring wide-eyed at the guy who had just clicked his lighter on. Sasha had abandoned ship and run out after Jean and Christa. I shoved at Ymir and she came out of her daze. She looked at me, fear and panic flooding her honey-brown eyes as a huge cacophony of sound burst around us, the air glowing, hot, yellow flames shooting toward us from the spot where the burned bodies of the two nameless men were standing. We ducked down onto the floor and I flung myself over Ymir. It was the only thing we could think to do, although I doubt it made even the slightest difference. Every thought fell from my mind as my body erupted in pain. Fire burned my flesh as it shot out from the source of the explosion. If only we had noticed the gas a second earlier...

I could hear screaming, I wasn't sure who it was, it might have been me. I couldn't hear anything else over the roar of the explosion, flames now licking at everything.

I was writhing around on the floor in pain, hoping to find something, anything that would cool my charred flesh. But there was no escape. The whole room had gone up in flames. The walls of the building seemed to have disappeared entirely. There were gaping holes in the ceiling and plaster-board rained down from above me. The table and chairs had been blown away by the energy that had erupted from the reaction, but none of this was of any importance. All I could feel was pain. The heat felt like it was tearing my skin apart and I couldn't tell what was Jean's painted burns and what was real, bloody, painful burns.

The ceiling was creaking and I was suddenly made aware of Ymir's screams. Something happened then. I felt cold, relieving water over me, saving me from the pain. Ymir had fallen silent and whoever else had been crying had stopped. My lungs were screaming from the smoke that was now quickly filling them and my vision was blurred, black spots covering everything. Someone was calling my name and then... nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this chapter and I am so sorry please forgive me for writing this in....
> 
> But I'm super happy with this it's my favourite chapter so far because there's so much Marco pining after Jean it's almost stupid but you know, Jean's fault for having his hands all over him really you get me? ;)
> 
> Hope you'll read next week too!! :D
> 
> However, to say sorry for writing that explosion in, here is Marco's full top 25 most played playlist from his crappy old iPod that he loves so dearly. The songs from Harry Potter are the ones he likes to listen to while he writes :)
> 
> 1\. Boys Of Summer - Don Henley  
> 2\. Piano Man - Billy Joel  
> 3\. Party In The USA - Miley Cyrus  
> 4\. New Born - Muse  
> 5\. Alone Together - Fall Out Boy  
> 6\. Save Rock and Roll - Fall Out Boy ft Elton John  
> 7\. Every You Every Me - Placebo  
> 8\. Don't Stop Believin' - Journey  
> 9\. Don't Stop Me Now - Queen  
> 10\. Killer Queen - Queen  
> 11\. Plug In Baby - Muse  
> 12\. Running Up That Hill - Placebo  
> 13\. Teenagers - My Chemical Romance  
> 14\. This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race - Fall Out Boy  
> 15\. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen  
> 16\. Welcome To The Black Parade - My Chemical Romance  
> 17\. Sugar We're Going Down - Fall Out Boy  
> 18\. Let It Go - The Frozen Soundtrack  
> 19\. Harry's Wondrous World - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Soundtrack  
> 20\. Leaving Hogwarts - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Soundtrack  
> 21\. My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light 'em Up) - Fall Out Boy  
> 22\. Hallelujah - Paramore  
> 23\. A Love Like War - All Time Low ft Vic Fuentes  
> 24\. Teenage Dirtbag - Wheatus  
> 25\. The Irony Of Choking On A Lifesaver - All Time Low


	7. Feel Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's been a long time coming since I've seen your face / ...but with you / I feel again / yeah with you / I can feel again / I'm feeling better ever since you know me"
> 
> Dedication, desperation, exasperation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning!! (I think?) This chapter contains major character injury and stuff, like, Marco sleeps a lot in this chapter actually... hmm... Also look at that summary. I fucking rhymes man! Sorry, enjoy!

You know, dreams are a funny thing really, aren't they? Images your mind creates in the depths of sleep, things that can happen to you on a daily basis and things that defy all the laws of the universe. In a dream you can go to the shop or school or spend time with your family, just like you do in real life. But you can also jump through the clouds, ride dragons and visit worlds from books. You never remember all of your dreams. I heard once that you actually have several dreams every night but you might only remember one, or maybe not even that.

There was something different about the dreams I had after I passed out, however. They were infrequent, interrupted and I could only hear. I couldn't see peoples faces to gauge their reactions, only recognise the muffled sound of their voices.

I was in a hospital. I could tell from the voices around me talking of "Doctor Levi" and "Doctor Erwin" and an "operation" and the faint and irritating beeping of a heart monitor. I couldn't understand how much time was passing at any given moment, hence not knowing how long I slept but, when I was able to, I could just about make out the voices of people I knew.

Christa was there, she often talked about Ymir and how she was recovering well. They both wished for me to get better soon and come back to them. Sasha cried a lot. She often told me she was sorry but she never said anything about why. I sometimes heard Connie and Eren in the mix, laughing loudly and making bad jokes, Reiner telling me I was "a lucky freckled bastard" to survive. I assumed Bertholdt was there when Reiner was, but if he was he never said anything. Armin was there a lot too, telling me what was going on in our classes, how I was going to have a whole heap to catch up on and how he wished he actually did have psychic powers so he could ask me how long I was planning on staying unconscious for. My family often stopped by, and one time I was able to make out the sounds of Jen's daughter whining that she was bored and wondering "why is Uncle Macko sleeping still?"

The voice that I heard the most, and the clearest, though, was Jean's. He was there nearly every time I was able to hear voices and he was the only person who was ever there alone. He told me about his day, how the dorm felt weird with just him there, how he missed me. I sometimes could hear him crying as he talked, gripping my left hand in both of his and begging me to wake up. People always touched my left hand, not even the doctors touched my right. I could feel pressure when people held my hand or patted my shoulder or placed a kiss on my head, but I couldn't feel anything else. No temperature or texture or pain. Nothing. And that scared the shit out of me.

I was, I presumed, lying in my bed in the hospital one day, maybe the same day as the fire I don't know, when sounds started swimming through my ears. It was different though, it wasn't normal talking. It sounded... melodic? S-someone was singing... something, I couldn't quite make out what though. Through the slightly delirious sleep that gripped my entire body I strained my ears, focusing all my energy on making out that tune. I recognised it, that was for sure. Then it cleared a bit more and I was able to make out some of the lyrics that were being sung to me.

"I can see you / your brown skin shining in the sun / you've got your hair combed back and your sunglasses on baby..." It was _that_ song. I couldn't tell who was singing it though, I couldn't even tell if it was a guy or a girl, my brain didn't seem to want to process that much information at that moment. But I wanted to find out who was singing it. Whoever it was, they stopped when they got to the end of the first chorus.

"Sorry Marco," it was Jean. "That's all I know." He laughed awkwardly.

I could see a dim red light. That was a first. Wait, I was seeing light through my eyelids! It slowly got brighter as my body woke up more. This was good, this was definitely a good thing! I didn't know how long I'd slept, but if the dreams were actually what was going on around me then it must have been at least a week or so, judging by the amount of times people said hello and goodbye. I gradually opened my left eye, squinting at the harsh brightness of the ceiling lights. My skin felt dry and stiff but my heart rate was picking up, I could feel my blood pulsing through my veins with excitement. My eye slowly adjusted to the lights and I could make out the room I was in. White walls, ceiling and curtains which were pulled away from the windows along the wall to my right, letting in the sun which shone high in the sky. Bouquets of various flowers were scattered sporadically around the room, some standing tall and proud in their vases, others wilting slightly with age. There was a door to my left, through which a nurse was disappearing, sprinting away. Mine was the only bed in the room but there were several chairs around me, pressed against the walls and a couple close to the bed; and on one of the chairs to my left, sat Jean.

I squeezed shut the one eye that I'd opened and tried to open both of them. Only I couldn't. I couldn't open my right eye. I thought maybe it was glued shut with sleep dust, so I lifted my left arm to rub it away. Wires that were attached to my wrist pulled my arm back down to rest beside me on the bed, so I instead raised my right arm to my face. When I touched my eye, however, I didn't feel it.

I stretched my right arm out above me, looking up with my one open eye. I was moving my arm. I could feel it's weight as I held it in the air... but it wasn't there. My neck, my chest, my shoulder and then... Panic began to set in and the heart monitor beside me beeped faster, keeping pace with my heart. Jean placed his hand on my left shoulder, collecting my attention and focusing it on him. His face was worried and solemn.

"Marco, calm down..."

The door opened and a short man sporting a dark undercut and white doctor's coat entered the room. He walked briskly to the side of my bed, clipboard in hand, and another doctor burst through the door, his blond hair in a similar style to the first man's.

"Levi you're not needed in this room, I told you bef..." He trailed off when his eyes landed on me lying in my bed, panic-stricken and breathing heavily, eyebrows furrowed as I began to feel harsh, searing pain again. "He's awake."

"Yes he's awake Erwin," the Doctor named Levi droned, "that's exactly why Nifa came to get me."

"But Levi he isn't your patient. You have your own surgeries and people to attend to today!" Doctor Erwin sounded frustrated yet was trying not to raise his voice as Doctor Levi pressed a couple of buttons on the machines next to me and wrote something down on his clipboard.

"Nifa put these into the computer will you?" He thrust the board at the nurse who had fled the room as I woke up and she scurried away, Doctor Erwin watching her incredulously as she went. He soon composed himself and joined Doctor Levi beside me, blocking Jean from my view.

I could feel something trickling into the veins of my left wrist and my head was already feeling heavy with sleep again. I wanted answers though, so I fought the feeling as hard as I could. My tongue felt large in my mouth, however and when I tried asking a question my voice came out hoarse and rough and my words were slurred. Soon enough, I was swimming through blackness yet again.

 

*

 

"Jean, you can't just sit here all week you know. You have to go home at some point, it's not good for your health. Mental or physical."

My one good eye slowly peeled open and I caught sight of Jean sitting across the room from my bed, a pile of comic books on his lap and Doctor Erwin hovering over him worriedly.

I swallowed what little saliva my body had managed to produce in an attempt to dampen my mouth and throat before calling out a quiet "Jean?" My throat felt like sandpaper. The curtains had been closed and there was a small amount of light trying to sneak into the room from the evening that covered the outside world.

I knew it was coming this time. I knew I wouldn't be able to open my right eye, or see my right arm, but it was still horrible.

"Jean?" I called again, slightly louder than the first time and suddenly he was at my side, gripping my hand tightly in both of his, his eyes wide and full of concern.

"Hey," he whispered. "How are you, Sleeping Beauty?"

I didn't answer for a moment or two. How was I? I was scared. I was confused. I was tired. I was in pain. I was happy to see his face. I was honoured that he refused to leave my side. I didn't know which to tell him though.

"What happened?" I asked instead.

Jean's face changed so suddenly it was like watching someone wipe the words off a black board. He swallowed loudly, knitting his eyebrows together, teeth worrying his bottom lip, before he began to fiddle gently with my fingers.

"How much do you remember?" His voice was hushed.

I furrowed my eyebrows in thought. "I remember going to the Halloween party. We were all sitting in the kitchen together and this guy came in and then Christa and Sasha could smell gas and someone lit a cigarette and then-" I halted.

Flashes of light. Burning. Pain. Smoke. Panic. Terror.

Jean gulped again. I could see how nervous he was in the way he refused to meet my brown eyes with his topaz ones. He cleared his throat before he spoke again.

"It was a gas explosion," he explained. "Ymir's house was pretty much destroyed but everyone made it out alright except you and her. I mean, Christa and me and Sasha got a couple of nasty burns but they're healing up quickly. Ymir was unconscious for about a week but now she's fine. The doctor's said she'll have some nasty scarring on her shoulder but that will probably be it because you kind of... You saved her Marco."

It did make a difference.

"But," I tried to calm my breathing which had become worried without me noticing, "what happened to me?" It was a stupid question, really. I knew full well what had happened to me. I'd lost my arm and most likely my eye too. I dreaded to think how terrible the scarring would look once I finally healed up, but still... I wanted to know how long I had spent in the strange dreams.

"Well the fire was put out pretty quickly by a burst water pipe so most of the burns won't leave scarring. But the fire took your eye and your arm was so badly burned... the skin was pretty much all gone," Jean's face tensed at the memory, "the muscles couldn't be saved either apparently. That's all I really know. That and you've been out for a couple months," Jean whispered.

"Wait," I asked, confused, "what's the date today?"

Jean finally looked me in the eye. "It's December thirtieth."

Now, you might expect that I started freaking out. I'd missed two months of my life you see, that's enough to scare anybody. And if you think that's what happened... you'd actually be wrong. I froze up instead. Completely. My brain stopped mid thought and went blank, my toes, which had been curling and un-curling relentlessly ceased their little dance and even my breathing finally calmed. My face fell slack, contrasting with Jean's features which were tensed and concerned.

"Are you okay?" he asked slowly. I turned my head gently to look at him.

"No. But I will be..." I hesitated. "I think."

Doctor Erwin cleared his throat, gaining our attention. "So, Marco, there are a few options of what to do next," he began. "You don't have to make any decisions until after your wounds have completely healed up and that will take a few months." He grabbed a chair and sat down next to Jean, leaning forwards with his arms crossed on his knees. His face bled sympathy and I wasn't sure if I wanted it or not. "But for now I want to tell you what we can do for you so you'll have plenty of time to come to that decision, and of course you'll need to speak to your parents about it too."

"Where are they?" I asked. I hadn't really thought about people and such yet but as soon as Doctor Erwin mentioned my mom and dad, their absence was suddenly pressing and obvious.

"They're on their way," Jean piped up. "I rang them after you passed out again but they're having to come all the way from the other side of Trost and it's half five so it'll be in rush hour traffic too."

I nodded slowly, the skin on my neck rough and bandages that I was previously unaware of restricting my movement.

"So once you've healed," Doctor Erwin continued, "we can go into rehabilitating you with or without a prosthetic arm. Now, unfortunately, the ones we have here at Trost are very expensive, the best ones we have are around a hundred and twenty thousand dollars, but they are able to work very well. It's up to you. I have a video I can show you if you'd like?"

Doctor Erwin showed me and Jean two videos, one of an arm nicknamed the "Terminator Prosthetic" and another more affordable, but far inferior arm. I didn't have to think about it for long. There was no way _I'd_ be able to afford something like that Terminator Prosthetic and I didn't know exactly how much money my parents had but a hundred and twenty thousand dollars... that's a hell of a lot of money that they can use for things other than me. Also, the other arms they had just didn't do it for me. Their movements were jerky and they looked clunky and unappealing. Hundreds, no, probably thousands of people were living every day as amputees, I could join them, how hard could it be?

"I don't think my family could afford that," I mumbled.

"I'll pay for it," Jean said, his face straight and deadly serious.

"What? No, Jean you don't have to-"

"No I want to," he cut me off, turning to Erwin. "When do you want the money?"

Erwin looked kind of shocked, confused and hesitant as he turned to me. "Is this what you want?"

"Well-" I paused. Yes I wanted the arm but no I didn't want Jean to pay for all of it himself.

"Marco," Jean placed a hand on my arm. "I can afford it. You know I can and you're my best friend. I want to help you and this is probably the only way I can!"

"But it's a lot of money Jean!" I reasoned. I really didn't want him to pay the entire sum. It made me feel like I was using him, even if he honestly wanted to do it.

"Why shouldn't I pay it?" His voice was louder now, I was probably pissing him off. "If you can give me a solid argument against it then I'll back off."

It took a moment for me to answer, and when I did, my voice was quiet. "It makes me feel guilty, like I'm using you."

Jean's face dropped and if anything the look on his face made me feel even worse. Yeah, I'm so nice I wouldn't let my best friend buy a new freaking _limb_ for me.

"But I don't _mind_ Marco! I want to help you!"

"No Jean." My answer was final. Jean slumped into his chair, defeated, deflating like tyre with a slow puncture.

 Erwin's gaze shifted uneasily between the two of us for a moment before he cleared his throat and stood up. "Like I said before Marco, you have plenty of time to decide on what you want to do and you can talk to your family and your friends about it. Don't be afraid to ask for anything either, we're here to help you." He gave me a small smile before nodding briefly at Jean and exiting the ward.

"I have to piss." Jean followed abruptly in Erwin's footsteps before I could say anything.

With the distraction of conversation gone, my burned body started begging for my attention. The way it did this was by itching and hurting. My entire body had been scorched by the flames that night and now, two months later, they were healing and oh my _God_ did it itch. I knew from experience, however, that the last thing you want to do to a healing injury is scratch it so I swatted my hand around gently, searching for something that I knew must be there. My fingers finally pressed the button to call for a nurse and not long after, Nifa, the lady who had gone to fetch Doctor Levi earlier, was by my side and allowing various pain killers and numbing agents into my blood stream.

Soon enough, the monstrous itching subsided somewhat, cool relief flooding into my mind... along with the drugs. My head felt light and clouded and I wasn't able to think straight. Haha... straight... something I wasn't. Puns...

Jean entered the room probably half an hour later.

"That was a long piss you just took there Jeanny," I laughed at him, my head lolling backwards into my pillow.

"Are you alright?" He stepped over to the side of my bed and took a seat. "You're acting drunk."

I tried to shake my head but decided against it when my brain felt like it was sloshing around inside my head. I screwed up my face at him instead. "They gave me funny stuff because my skin felt itchy." I was speaking before thinking and then thinking after I spoke and everything I said sounded like something a five year old would say but I couldn't stop myself and oh God this was not my proudest moment kids.

I held up my hand and beckoned for Jean to come closer, giggling the entire time. It drew a confused smile to Jean's lips which made my stomach do that flippy over thing. I didn't know if that was the drugs or... What the hell did they put in me?

Jean shuffled his chair closer to my bed and I put my hand on top of his head. "Jeaaaannn..." I whispered at him, my eyes closed, a sleepy grin on my face.

"Yes?"

"Jean. We're friends aren't we?" I didn't know where I was going with this and to be honest I didn't really care. I felt like I was floating on a cloud and I was slap happy.

"Of course we are. Why would you ask that you dumbass?" Jean laughed and I ruffled his light hair.

"Jean," I kept saying his name, it felt funny in my mouth, but I liked it. "Jean I'm afraid we can't be friend anymore."

He chuckled. "And why's that then Marco?"

"Because..." I pulled him closer by his hair, and whispered to him, "it's because you smell too bad."

He leaned back into his chair, my hand falling limp beside me, and laughed. "I'm sorry that's not something I can help."

I buried my head back into my pillow, taking a deep breath and closing my eyes. I wanted to swim in my dream. I didn't know why, swimming just sounded like fun. I wanted to swim with the people who I spoke with earlier. They were nice. I couldn't think who they were though, my memory was playing games of hide and seek with the thoughts.

"Wait I have to tell Jean something!" Words were just tumbling out of my mouth in a mess of syllables at this point, my brain no longer filtering the information. I giggled, my eyes still closed. Or was it my _eye_ was still closed? I couldn't remember, the funny drugs made me feel strange, but in a good way.

Someone shuffled closer to me, but I didn't know who the person was anymore. All I knew is that I wanted to say thank you to Jean for looking after me while I was sleeping before.

"What did you want to tell Jean?" the person asked me.

I thought for a moment, wondering how I should phrase the all-important words.

"I want to tell Jean thank you for looking after sleepy Marco and also that he's my bestest friend. But he already knows that bit so you don't need to tell him." The person chuckled and I laughed with them. They seemed nice. I think I blacked out after that. At least, the next time I woke, I didn't remember anything that had happened after that strange, almost drunken conversation with the stranger who was actually Jean.

However, any worries of my missing memories of the previous night were squashed to the back of my mind by the arrival of my parents and youngest sister which had apparently occurred while I was unconscious. With their visit they brought a fresh bouquet of lilies to replace the old ones beside my bed, and an air of relaxation. The idle chatter that eventually settled between us after my mother had finished crying with relief was calm and nice. They talked to me about silly little things I'd missed at home and Jasmine told me all about how she lost her first tooth last Tuesday, sticking her tongue out at me through the little gap she had acquired.

Everything was calm. Everything felt almost normal. It was perfect, considering where we were and why, apart from the fact that Jean wasn't there. After the small argument we'd had previously, we hadn't properly spoken. Well, not including the strange little chat we had where I was basically high. I was scared that it was the fight that had scared him off. I was even more afraid that drugged-up-me had said something he shouldn't have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not entirely sure if I like this chapter?? But I've been sat here for two weeks debating whether or not to post it up and I've just decided "fuck it," because the longer I sit and stare at it the more I'm going to dislike it and yeah... I hope you enjoyed it? Please let me know what you thought, it really means so much when people leave comments or kudos! 
> 
> If you want to follow me on twitter, my name is @alchemyhowell because I'm a freaking fangirl omfg I'm sorry -.- But yeah, I tweet about my fic sometimes so it will help you know when I'm updating and stuff.... I haven't written any of chapter 8 yet, I don't even know what's gonna happen yet... so idk if that'll be up next Saturday or Sunday or what... I'll tweet about it. 
> 
> The prosthetic arm that they're looking at (the really good one) I imagine would be something like the one in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qUPnnROxvY   
> Only I think it would be a bit more movable? Does that make sense? Kind of like the automail in Fullmetal Alchemist, you get me?
> 
> Anyway, I really hope you liked this chapter! And please read again next time I update if you did!


	8. Piano Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Sing us a song, you're the piano man / sing us a song tonight / well we're all in the mood for a melody / and you've got us feeling alright"
> 
> Jean is not himself, Jean is in tears, Jean is the piano man.

"... and then Ymir just screamed at the guy and he screamed back so she tried to punch him. Really, if Reiner hadn't been there we'd probably never be allowed back to that cinema." Christa finished her thrilling tale entitled 'When Ymir Freaked Out at the Ticket Guy' with a laugh which was echoed by the rest of us. It had been five months since I'd first woken up in December and the whole gang was sat in my ward with me. I was allowed to move around a little more now that my burns had nearly healed, only the worst ones on my face and chest were still tended to regularly with ointments, so I was sitting in a chair in a not-very-round circle which consisted of all of my friends: Armin, Ymir, Christa, Reiner, Bertholdt, Annie, Sasha, Connie, Eren and Mikasa. The only person missing from the gang was Jean.

Reiner suddenly burst into another story that he'd wanted to tell me. They were all very good at keeping me up to date with what was going on outside of the hospital. We talked for a while, and when I say "we" I really mean "Reiner," complete with big hand gestures and facial expressions. After what felt like an age of me staring at the door, waiting for Jean to appear and pretending to pay attention to Reiner's tale, a cold draft wafted through the ward as the door opened.

Jean slipped in, grabbing a chair and sitting down on the opposite side of the circle to me. A chorus of "hey Jean's" echoed around the group. He sat slightly awkwardly, slumped back in the plastic chair with his hands in his pockets. I tried to get his attention by staring at him as hard as I could and I probably looked like an idiot while doing so, but he didn't look up from where his eyes were glued to his black Converse All Stars. He didn't meet my gaze for the entire time we sat there. As a matter of fact, he didn't look at anyone else either. It made me feel more confident that I hadn't done something wrong, but I was worried all the same. I was made even more distressed by his silence when Doctor Levi burst into the ward, complained that there were too many people there and we were "making the room smell of teenagers," before leaning over and typing something into the computer in the room. Well, that wasn't the thing I expected him to pick up on, but I didn't like it when he didn't comment on the fact that Eren didn't seem to even _blink_ as he stared intently at Doctor Levi's bum.

Reiner laughed and called "gaaayyy" to Eren once Levi had left, at which, everyone looked pointedly at Reiner whose hand was held firmly in that of one Bertholdt Fubar.

People eventually started to get up and leave when Doctor Levi came back at around five o'clock and shouted at us. However he was quickly followed by Erwin who apologised profusely but did encourage the others to go home. The only one to stay was Jean. He helped me hobble back over to my bed and then sat there on my left for a while.

We didn't say anything for a bit. Jean was still looking down at his lap and stubbornly refusing to make eye contact. He looked deep in thought.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

He seemed startled that I had addressed him. "Oh uh, yeah, I guess."

"Only 'I guess'?"

"What? No I'm fine," he stammered. "I'm just... thinking."

I tilted my head and shifted so I could see him better. "About...?"

He let out a long breath that sounded more like a sigh before looking at me for the first time all day. I couldn't read his expression. Confused? Sceptical?

"Stuff," he said.

His amber eyes burned into mine until I had to look away from the heat in his gaze. He was looking at me too intently and even though his presence made me almost forget it, I hated the way I looked now.

Back when I had first woken up, Doctor Erwin had waited until my family arrived before he would let me look at my injuries in the mirror. He wanted them to be there for emotional support and so did I. That day, there hadn't been much to see. My face and torso had been covered in bandages, but the material covering the entire right side of my face and the stump where my right arm should have been were enough to freak me out. They'd had to put me back to sleep for a couple of hours. The skin graft taken from my left thigh for my chest had healed quickly. I had recovered well from the reconstructive surgery on my ribs, face and muscles on the right side of my body and they doubted the fact that I'd had to have half of my right lung removed due to smoke damage would cause me much trouble. The doctors told me I was lucky to have survived at all. I was young and healthy, and apparently someone ten years older than me would have taken a lot longer to heal than I did... if they had lived. The two strangers with cigarettes hadn't. I learned that their names were Thomas Wagner and Mylius Zeramuski.  

I stared at my lap for a little while.

"Is it anything you want to talk about?" I asked quietly.

There was a slight pause before Jean spoke again. "It's... there are three things. I want to talk about them but I don't know where to start, or even if I'm ready to talk about a couple of them."

"Start with whatever you feel is more urgent or you feel more comfortable talking about."

He sighed. His voice was small, smaller than normal, when he said "Nac called me last night." This made me look at him again.

"What?" I was shocked. "What did he say?"

"Nothing much. He said he regretted what he did and that Australia was ''too far away from me'." He added quotation marks with his fingers to the last part.

I hesitated. "And what did you say to him?"

"I told him he could go fuck himself." He laughed but it sounded awkward and forced. "I was going to hang up after that but then he started talking about you." Jean's eyes darkened and he looked kind of scary. I wouldn't like to be on the wrong terms with him when he looked like that. "When I told him we were still rooming together he got angry again. But then when I told him about the fire," we both cringed, "he calmed down. It was fucking scary. I couldn't tell what the hell he was thinking."

I sucked in a breath and held it. Why was Nac so against me? I didn't even know the guy! Had he seen through me? Was I really being too obvious with my feelings for Jean? To be honest, the knowledge that I had somehow pissed off this violent man terrified me.

"What exactly was he saying about me?" I asked.

"He just... he asked me to stay away from you at first. He was being really fucking calm about it but when I told him 'no' he started getting madder and madder. He was saying stuff like, how he didn't want me to get hurt by you? But that's bullshit because I know you'd never hurt me." He turned to face me and gave me a small, sad smile. I couldn't look at him.

"But I have."

"What?"

I sighed. "I _have_ hurt you. When I didn't wake up for all that time, you were scared weren't you? You cried a lot. I made you cry..."

The air seemed to thicken with tension as I clenched my fist tightly. Then there was a hand on it, gently prying my fingers apart by threading theirs through them. I stared at it.

"How do you know that?" His voice was quiet, barely even a whisper and it sounded thick with tears but it didn't waver.

I swallowed and cleared my throat. "I could hear." I began, and I heard Jean's breath hitch and his grasp on my hand tightened a bit. "I could hear you guys all talking to me and you were always there. I could hear when you told me stories about the others that I was missing out on and I heard you when you cried too. One time you cried so much you made yourself sick and I wanted to get up and comfort you but I couldn't and I felt so... so _angry_." The beeping of the heart monitor beside me sped up and I tried to control my breathing. "Sorry." I whispered. "I'm sorry..." Jean wasn't looking at me. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes wide and full of fear, not focusing on anything. His mouth hung open as though he wanted to say something but the words wouldn't come out.

"Oh my God." I barely heard it, if I hadn't been looking at him and seen his lips move I might have missed it entirely. "Oh my fucking God," he repeated, louder. He turned to face me again and tears began to spill over his eyelids, running down his pale cheeks.

"What? Are you okay?"

"Marco I'm so sorry," he sobbed. "I'm _so_ fucking sorry. You heard it didn't you?"

I looked at him, confused. Heard it? What was he talking about?

"Marco I didn't want to do it I tried to convince them not to but... they said there wasn't another choice and-"

"Wait, Jean, what are you talking about? What happened?" By this point I really was freaking out.

Jean's eyes widened even further as a realisation hit him. "Y-you didn't... hear it?"

"Hear _what?"_ I raised my voice slightly, desperate to know what the _hell_ he was talking about.

"Shit..." He raked his free hand through his hair a few times before it joined his other one, holding mine firmly in his grip. "I tried to get them to stop, I honestly did, but Doctor Erwin didn't think you were going to make it. Your vital signs were bad and everything was pointing towards the worst and..." He paused to calm his shaky and ragged breathing. "They were gonna pull the plug on you, Marco. They wanted to turn off your life support."

_Oh my God._ If it weren't for the heart monitor's steady pulsing beside me, I'd have sword that my heart skipped a beat or two. My body went slack and my jaw hung open as Jean's words spun through my mind.

_"They wanted to turn off your life support."_

I nearly died, and then they, the doctors, the people who were supposed to keep me alive, wanted to take away any chance of recovery by _killing me?_ I didn't want to die, and there I was, breathing and awake and on the fast track to recovery. My life would never be the same again but at least I _had_ a life! But, if they'd wanted to take it, why was I still there?

"So how come they didn't?" I asked Jean, after I had unfrozen. I turned away from him to stare out of the window at the now-setting sun.

"You're mom and dad were completely confused and battling with themselves, wanting what was best for you, you know? And Doctor Erwin said he didn't know if you were in pain but he said with the amount of drugs they were putting in you there was no way you'd be able to breathe on your own and stuff without being in intense pain."

"I wasn't in pain..." I pointed out.

"Good," he sighed, "but we didn't know that, and Erwin was saying that you _wouldn't_ wake up on your own. Or that the chances of it happening were infinitely slim. And your parents got the final say in what happened to you so they were gonna keep the machines on for another month but if you didn't show any signs of recovery then they'd turn them off. But then one day you started breathing on your own, so they took the life support away and toned down the drugs... and here you are."

I smiled to myself. I didn't hate my parents for their decision. It must have been the most difficult position to ever be in for a parent. I'd have to remember to thank them for everything when they next got a free moment to visit. But my entire being was filled with warmth at Jean's words. The knowledge that he couldn't bear to let me go made my heart sing. Although, that's what best friends do, I suppose: look out for each other, care for each other. 

"Do you remember waking up?" Jean asked suddenly.

I looked up at him in surprise but thought back to when I first acknowledged senses other than sound after the fire. The white room that seemed too bright, the strange tingling all over my skin from the burns, my missing limb and eye...

"Yeah," I said. "Everything seemed too bright, it was kind of weird."

"No, I mean, like, do you remember anything from just _before_ you woke up?"

I scrunched up my face in thought as I raked through my memories of the voices I heard while I was asleep until I found what I was looking for.

"That was you wasn't it?" I smiled. "Singing Boys Of Summer."

He laughed. "Yeah... shit, part of me was hoping you didn't hear that, you know. I'm not the best singer."

I chuckled. "Well, it was enough to wake me up! And if that's the case then why do you always sing in the shower?"

"Fuck you!" He huffed and folded his arms indignantly. "I happen to be able to sing all of Bohemian Rhapsody _by myself_ when I'm in the shower!"

"Well _that_ is something I'd like to hear!" I nudged him with my shoulder and grinned at him.

"Hah! Maybe not, but I'll bring my guitar tomorrow if you want?"

"Wait wait wait," I held out my hand like a 'stop' sign. "You play guitar?" He nodded. "What else do you play?"

Jean smirked as he reeled off the list of instruments: "I can play guitar, ukulele, piano, saxophone, drums, violin and recorder."

"... Recorder?"

"Oh come on, you're telling me you didn't have to learn how to play it in elementary school?"

I shrugged and laughed. "Okay, true. But do you actually still play it?"

Jean let out a bark of laughter. "Oh fuck no, I've not touched the thing in years!"

We sat for a moment until our laughter died down.

" _Would_ you bring your guitar tomorrow?" I asked.

Jean smiled at me. "Of course. Do you want me to bring any of the others?"

"Hah! I'd like to see you lug a piano in here!"

He smirked again. "Well I could bring it if you want. I've got an electric one so I just need to bring the piano and my speakers for it."

I stared at him, wide eyed like a child. My grandfather always used to play piano before he passed away, and I would perch on his lap, watching his hands skim smoothly over the black and white keys as he created music and wishing that I possessed the hand-eye coordination needed to play the instrument. He ended up giving me some kind of casual singing lesson every time, until it got to the point where, at every special occasion, the two of us would perform for the whole family. It became tradition.

"Bring the piano," I whispered. "I've not sung with one since my grandfather died."

"Is this a deal we're making then?" Jean grinned at me. "I'll bring my piano and guitar and play them for you if you sing."

I didn't have to think twice, really. I held out my hand and he shook it. "That's a deal I can't say no to."

*

"Do you wanna go back to the room?" I nodded my head toward the door of the sitting room.

"Yeah sure, if you want," Armin said, placing the book he had been glaring at the blurb of back on the shelf beside him. I flicked the brakes off the wheels of my chair and he pushed me out of the room. It was a nice idea: a room where you can go with visitors that isn't the ward you're staying in, but really, it's not the most enjoyable place on earth when the TV only has about five crappy channels, none of the books are any good, half the pieces are missing from the lone jigsaw puzzle and the only other people in there are trying to speak (shout) to their hard-of-hearing grandmother. Not to mention the fact that when Armin and I first got in there, the little girl had whispered something to her mother before pointing at me. Her mom scowled at her and nudged her towards her grandmother and gave me an apologetic smile. It wasn't the kid's fault, but it still hurt to know I looked weird to her.

"You know," Armin said, "I really can't decide if I want to read that book or not."

I made some kind of humming noise at him.

"Like, the blurb makes it _sound_ interesting but the reviews I've read make it sound like it's not as good as you might think. Also, I read the first chapter and I really just couldn't get into it..."

I made sure to sound like I was paying attention to Armin's truly thrilling analogies of books while my mind wandered along its own path. The little girl in the sitting room had looked down-right scared when she saw me, and it made me think... was that going to be my life now? Entering a room with my missing limb and single-eyed face and scarred skin and having every person there turn to give me a look of pity? It sounds stupid and cliched but... I didn't _want_ the pity of strangers. I didn't want pity from anyone. It was no-one's fault, what happened that night, and if anything it was my own fault I got it so bad. I could have followed the others and just fled the room, but some inner part of me took control like an auto-pilot and kept me there to help Ymir. To be fair, I don't think I'd have been able to live with myself if I had let Ymir die there. But now my life would always be harder than it was before. I think the thing I was most afraid of, was my friends treating me differently. I mean, so far they'd been pretty much the same: laughing and messing around, bringing boxes of chocolates or bouquets of flowers every now and then. On New Year's, Ymir even brought a bottle of Champaign, although it was confiscated by the doctors. Sucks to be under-age. They replaced it with pink lemonade though, so it wasn't completely bad.

My mind kept slipping back to thoughts of the little girl. I _did_  look weird now. I barely resembled the person I had been eight months ago: freckles that once were splattered right across my face now only made it half-way before the scar tissue took their place. The scarring also took the place of the skin that had been bronzed and brown, naturally tanned. My hair wasn't as long as it had been, the fire had pretty much singed it all off, and though it was now growing back and nearly the length it had been before, it was patchy around where my right ear once was. Now there was just a hole leading to an ear drum I couldn't even hear with. I liked the way I looked before. I'd say I was good looking, yeah. And that's not vain! It's good to like yourself. More people should, really. But now? Now I really was grotesque.

It made me think of Jean. Not the grotesque bit! No! Just how he's the complete opposite of that. If I'd thought of myself as pretty decent to look at, then Jean must have been some kind of angel. I couldn't wait for him to visit later, after his final class of the day. Armin was only there because he'd had a completely free day and it really was great to see him, but I was probably being terrible company for him due to the anticipation of hearing Jean play his instruments later.

"You're thinking about him again." Armin's comment made me jump probably six feet into the air. We were in the elevator, on our way up to the third floor and my room.

"Thinking about who?" I craned my neck back to look up at him. He didn't look very approving. "I wasn't," I said, fully aware of who he knew I was thinking about.

"You were. You completely ignored me when I was talking to you just now."

"Yeah, okay, sorry," I huffed, "but why does that mean I was thinking about Jean?"

Armin frowned at me. "Because you get that silly look on your face, like your concentrating really hard on one specific thought, but you look calm at the same time. You don't look like that any other time than when we talk about him, therefore, you must be thinking about him."

"Screw you Armin."

"You know it's true." Yes it was true but that didn't mean I wanted to talk about it.

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Yes."

"Proceed."

I sighed. "He's wonderful."

"I gathered," Armin acknowledged in a bored-sounding voice.

The elevator doors pinged open.

"... the straightest straight to ever straight." Reiner finished and turned his attention from Jean, who was having a staring contest with the floor, to me and Armin. "Yo." He nodded at us.

_The straightest straight to ever straight._ An interesting sentence there Reiner... I was intrigued as to who they were talking about. I'd ask later.

"You okay Jean?" I asked.

He looked up when I said his name and his face dropped the I-hate-everything look and gained a slightly happier one. "Yeah! We went to your room but you weren't there so we were gonna try and find you."

"Oh, sorry." I motioned for Armin to start moving and he wheeled me out of the elevator. "We were in the visitors room."

"Ah it's shit in there," Reiner complained.

"It really is," Armin and I mumbled simultaneously.

Reiner looked at his watch before clapping his hands and announcing "I have to get going. Told Bertholdt I'd go see a movie with him."

"Oh which one?" I asked.

"Guardians of the Galaxy I think he wanted to see. I want to see it too though so at least it's not like when he made me watch Frozen with his sister." He cringed at the memory. "Buying that ticket was awkward."

We laughed and said goodbye and he got into the elevator, waving dramatically as the doors slid shut between us.

"Back to the room then?" Armin suggested and Jean nodded enthusiastically.

We wandered back to my ward pretty much in silence but as soon as we got there, Jean opened the door and I let out a gasp that was louder than I expected it to be.

My little recovery ward had been taken over by the electric piano that now stood on its stand at the end of the bed, its case discarded on the floor against the wall it was facing. A pair of speakers, probably around a foot in height were placed on the ground to either side of the instrument and a guitar was propped against the end of the bed, its strings shining like threads of a spider's web in the bright light that leaked into the room from the hallway.

Jean hurried over to the piano, turning it on and playing a simple chord.

"You ready to sing for me Marco?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fudge bunnies this took me like 24985623 years to write. I'M SO SORRY I JUST COULDN'T DO IT I HAD THE MOST AWEFUL WRITERS BLOCK THE ENTIRE TIME AND I HAVE SO MANY REGRETS IN THIS FIC I JUST CAN'T!!
> 
> Seriously though, I really quite regret writing the fire explosion thingy in so early. There are so many more scenes I want to write, but before I can do that I need to get Marco out of this fucking hospital and idk how long that's gonna take. It will hopefully be soon though bc I can't wait to get him back in the dorm! I missed writing that stupid tiny room :')
> 
> So yeaaahhhhh this is the new chapter yey I hope it's alright. Next chapter is gonna have a shit load of cutes in it bc hells yes Jean is a musical little boy. Look forward to it folks!
> 
> I have twitter if you didn't know, and I also made a tumblr where I post updates about this fic and I also post random bits of art that I draw so if you have any questions or anything make sure to drop me a tweet or a tumblr ask! :D 
> 
> Thank you again so much to everyone who leaves kudos and comments, actually just everyone who even reads this thing because the amount of people who do is overwhelming! Also, let me know if you're reading as I'm updating and stuff bc I'm really interested! :)
> 
> Love you all! ~ Becky


	9. Some important info...

Hi guys! This isn't a new chapter of the fic and I'm really sorry about that. But I'm here to ask some advice and give you some information about where I've been the past month.

I'm gonna be perfectly honest and tell you I've not been on any kind of cool world tour or anything, I've literally been either at school or sat in my room aimlessly browsing the internet. But there is a reason as to why I've not updated this fic in so long...

When I started writing this, I had a few really good ideas that I really liked and was really excited to write. I've not written a chaptered fic before this so I was looking forward to starting this! Thing is, I've made a mistake. I feel like I've written everything just completely wrong. I'm really not happy with the order I've written the events in this fic, I wanted to bring Nac back into the equation _before_ the fire at Ymir's house, and I feel like I really didn't develop the friendship between Jean and Marco enough before I jumped into stupid pining Marco desperate for Jean's dick.

There is also a really major part of this story that I've really subtly hinted at but not brought to light yet that I don't know much about and probably won't be able to write it that well, but I want to do some research into it, talk to some friends about it and try and write it because I really want to have it in the story, there are so many funny and interesting scenes I could write! Thing is, it's a really REALLY major part of the plot that I needed to include earlier in order for it to really be good, does that make any sense at all? Like, I wanted to put it in, again, _before_ the fire because I just feel the whole story would be better that way? I don't know. I don't want to say what the thing is because it's like, I want you to find out at the same time Marco does, but if I start the fic again it will hopefully be better and you'll like it more and I'll like it more and I'll be more motivated to update it you get me?

 

Anyway, here's what I wanted to know from you. What is your HONEST opinion on this fic? Do you like the way it's written and what do you think of me starting it again start again?

If I  _did_ start again, it would be the same story, just in the order I originally planned it to be in. But would you still read it? It would have literally everything I have an want to write in THIS fic, just ordered differently, and better. But yeah... please leave a comment and let me know? Or [send me a tweet](http://twitter.com/goldiealchemy) or a [message on tumblr](http://goldiealchemy.tumblr.com/ask), whatever's easiest for you, but I really want your input because you're the most important part of this fic to be perfectly honest!

 

I've decided I'm most likely not going to continue this fic. I'm really sorry to anyone who was enjoying it but I can't find any inspiration to write this story any more. I HAVE, however, recently been working on another jeanmarco AU that I'm really falling in love with. I'm hoping to at some point turn it into a chaptered fic and I hope you'll read it if/when it eventually happens!

Sorry this has been so long, and not an update on the story...

Thanks for your help and for reading :) 

~ Becky <3

**Author's Note:**

> I do have some social networking sites if you want to try and keep more up-to-date with when I'm updating and stuff because my schedule of uploading on Saturdays has gone /completely/ out the window! (also I changed my name on here so that I could match it with my Tumblr so it's still Slelgar here but now I'm Selfics instead! It's like 'selfies' but it's 'fics' instead ahaha I'm so funny...)
> 
> http://twitter.com/goldiealchemy  
> http://goldiealchemy.tumblr.com


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